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ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 




tL^^nO'^iA-ci^ ^^cu/i/x^ , 0,£i&^e^-ny ^a/et^'-fZ'yy. 



THE HISTORY OF 

ARYAN RULE IN 
INDIA 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 
THE DEATH OF AKBAR 

E. B. HAVELL 

Author of "The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India" 

" Indian Architecture : Its Psycholog-y Structure and 

History " " Indian Painting and Sculpture " 

" The Ideals of Indian Art " etc. 




NEW YORK 
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLrlSHHRS 



5'^ 



-P^^ 






PRINTED AT 
THE COMPLETE PRESS 
WEST NORWOOD 
LONDON ENGLAND 



INTRODUCTION 

THE Eastern Question is always with us, for the fate of 
the British Empire is bound up with it ; and the kernel 
of the Eastern Question lies in India, the country which 
has contributed most to the wealth, prosperity, and power 
of the Empire. But neglect of the study of Indian history, 
or 'colossal ignorance' of it, has never been regarded as a dis- 
qualification for the highest positions in the Government of 
India. The Imperial ParHament takes it for granted that a 
capable British Minister is as well quahfied for deahng with 
the problems of Indian administration as he is for any other 
office of State. 

It is a significant fact that Indians generally prefer an 
administrator who has not been through the mill of the Indian 
Civil Service, from the idea that he will be likely to treat 
high political questions in a more liberal and unbiased spirit. 
And in this matter the Indian has intuitively understood the 
secret of the astonishing success of British rule in the East. 
Indian philosophy has always discriminated between two 
kinds of knowledge — intuitional or divinely inspired wisdom, 
and traditional, or that which is acquired by training and 
experience ; and the former has always been held to be in 
the highest plane. It is not the educational equipment or 
administrative efficiency of the bureaucracy which makes the 
vast majority of Indians accept British rule as the best possible 
one, and brings Hindu and Musalman to rally round the flag of 
the Empire at the most critical time of its existence. It is that 
they recognise that the present Aryan rulers of India, in spite 
of ' colossal ignorance ' and the mistakes which are the result 
of it, are generally animated by that same love of justice and 
fair-play, the same high principles of conduct and respect for 

V 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

humanitarian laws, which guided the ancient Aryan statesmen 
and lawgivers in their relations with the Indian masses. 

Our Indo-Aryan brothers have perhaps more than most 
Britons of that deep veneration for true knowledge which has 
always been characteristic of the Aryan race. They recognise 
in modern European scientific research, so far as it is disin- 
terested and not prostituted for base purposes, the culmination 
of the quest which their own divinely inspired rishis followed 
for thousands of years, and they eagerly desire to have the 
doors of this new temple of Sarasvati opened to them wider. 
I^ord Macaulay, in spite of his contempt for Indo-Aryan 
culture, is still regarded by them as a great statesman and 
benefactor of India — and from their point of view rightly so, 
for, though profoundly ignorant of Indo-Aryan history, his 
intuitive genius showed him the path leading to an Indian 
Renaissance, though he himself totally miscalculated the 
direction it would take. 

But neither Great Britain nor India can always expect 
to be so well served or afford to regard ignorance of Indian 
history as the best qualification for Anglo-Indian statesmen. 
Not only the British nation but all Europe pays dearly for 
lack of understanding of the Eastern Question. It is not 
improbable that future historians in reviewing the causes of 
Europe's present political bankruptcy will find the chiefest 
in the fatal obsession of British statesmen that for the security 
of our Empire in India it was necessary or expedient for Great 
Britain to bolster up Turkish misrule in Asia and in Europe — 
an idea deeply rooted in Anglo-Indian official traditions — and 
in the misreading of Muhammadan history, which even now 
makes Turks, Pathans, and Mongols the regenerators of 
idolatrous Hindu India and the cultured inspirers of all that 
is noble in Indian architecture. Deeper insight into the 
psychology of Indian history would have added more power 
and wisdom to the foreign policy of Great Britain and to the 
cause of the Allies — ^which is the Aryan cause. 

The course of the Great War has shown how groundless were 
the fears that Indian Muhammadans, as a body, would desire 
vi 



INTRODUCTION 

to prolong the unlioly alliance between Islam and the powers 
of evil which Turkish rulers, young and old, in Europe and in 
Asia, have maintained for so many centuries. India herself 
has been in the past one of the chief sufferers from this 
alliance — as Muhammadan historians have clearly shown — 
and Indian Muhammadans love their motherland too well 
and respect Islam too much to become the tools of the 
criminal conspiracy which plunged Europe into a mad war — a 
conspiracy in which the purblind politicians of Young Turkey 
believed they saw a great opportunity for themselves and 
their country. 

But neither British nor Turkish politicians can claim much 
credit for clarity of vision with regard to the Eastern Question. 
The Aryan spirit of British statesmen saved us from the folly 
and crime of remaining passive onlookers in the great struggle ; 
but had their predecessors understood Indian history better 
the catastrophe might have been minimised or possibly averted. 
The modern scientific method of Oriental research, inspired 
by German thoroughness and German lack of psychological 
insight, has since the days of Macaulay and Mountstuart 
Elphinstone added greatly to the material for the history of 
India, but has not done much for the better interpretation of it. 
In one point, indeed, of vital importance for ourselves, it has 
even led us further astray. Oriental scholars of the nineteenth 
century, though they failed completely to understand the 
predominance of Aryan inspiration in Indian art and to recog- 
nise national art as a key to the true interpretation of history, 
at least firmly grasped the essential truth that before the 
Muhammadan invasions, if not afterwards, it was Aryan 
culture which gave India its high place among the civilisations 
of the world and inspired its greatest intellectual achievements. 
But many modern writers of Oriental history proclaim as the 
latest discovery of science that the early Aryan invaders of 
India, who won the undying veneration of the people as mighty 
seers and leaders of men, were only successful soldiers, versed 
in the arts of chivalrous warfare, and that they borrowed their 
finer culture from the Dravidians, and other civilised races 

vii 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

they conquered. Almost they would persuade us that the 
intellectual, high-souled Aryan is a myth, or reduce the his- 
torical sum of Aryan achievements to the common factor that 
might is right and military despotism the best of all possible 
governments. 

lyct us by all means construct history on a scientific basis ; 
but the scientists should not forget that the master-builder 
must be an artist as well as a mathematician. The historian 
who totally misunderstands the ideas which inspire the mind 
of a people may use his material with the utmost scientific 
skill, but the result will hardly be anything but a complete 
falsification of the most vital and informing historical truths. 
And such a total misunderstanding of the Indian mind, as it 
is expressed in the great monuments of Indian art, runs through- 
out all the standard histories of India which are the text-books 
for British statesmen and administrators. Is it not reasonable 
to suppose that this explains why Indians prefer the ' colossal 
ignorance ' of the British statesman to the imperfect learning 
of the experts ? For though Indians themselves may not 
always be better informed, it must be peculiarly humiliating 
to them to be constantly told by their rulers that in political 
science India has never at any period of her history attained 
to the highest level of Europe ; that Freedom has never spread 
her wings over their native land ; that they are heirs to untold 
centuries of ' Oriental despotism ' and must wait patiently 
until the highly cultured political fruits of the West can be 
successfully grown in the virgin soil of India. 

Whether unintentional or not, no greater spiritual injury 
can be done to a people than to teach them to undervalue or 
despise the achievements of their forefathers. To overvalue 
them can hardly be a mistake. Not the least valuable of our 
spiritual resources in the Great War has been the desire of 
every man and woman to uphold the honour of their race, or 
country, or province, or town, or school, or family, inspired 
by the traditions, legendary or otherwise, of a glorious past. 
And it cannot be to the advantage either of the British Empire 
or of India that British statecraft in India should be based 
viii 



INTRODUCTION 

upon historically false premises, and that India's present 
Aryan rulers should misunderstand or ignore the political 
ideals and methods by which the great men of our own race 
made the people of India accept Aryan domination as the 
greatest of divine blessings. The fact that Aryan principles 
of polity had been to a great extent perverted or forgotten 
when Great Britain assumed the sovereignty of India does not 
absolve us from the obligation not only of studying carefully 
the history of Aryan India, and of preserving with religious care 
what remains of its monuments, but of following the example 
of the greatest of Indian Muhammadan rulers, Akbar, in 
making Indo- Aryan traditions the central pillar of the Empire. 
In thus honouring our Aryan forerunners in India we shall 
both honour ourselves and make the most direct and effective 
appeal to Indian loyalty. 

The average Briton understands Indian loyalty as the most 
decisive proof of the complete success of British rule and the 
attachment of Indians to the British Crown. The historian 
who accepts that as a full and sufficient explanation is very 
far from understanding the Indian mind and has a very limited 
perception of the truths of Indian history. Indian loyalty is 
not born of attachment to European political theories or to 
any modern European form of government. It is a sentiment 
which is deeply rooted in Indo- Aryan religion and in devotion 
to the Aryan ideal. The idea of Vishnu the Preserver and 
King of the Universe has its primitive roots in the ideal Aryan 
temporal ruler and spiritual leader who protected his people 
with his strong right arm, upheld the Aryan law of righteous- 
ness, and maintained the liberties of the Aryan freeman. Bhakti, 
or whole-souled devotion of man to God, which is one of the 
leading motives of Indian religious thought, is the consecration 
of the loyalty of the Aryan soldier towards his chieftain to 
the ideals of spiritual life. lyoyalty is a sentiment which has 
been nourished by every Indian religious teacher. Brahman 
as well as Kshatriya. It has been the corner-stone of Indian 
polity from the remotest antiquity. Krishna preached it 
in the Bhagavad Git a. The heroes of the Rdmdyana and 

ix 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Mahdhhdrata, whose lives and conduct are still the inspiration 
of the Indian masses, were the living exemplars of it. The 
Buddha built up his Sangha upon it. Akbar used it as the 
foundation of his Din-Ilahi. 

Even the Indian who has been sedulously taught in Anglo- 
Indian schools and British universities to undervalue or 
despise Indo-Aryan culture has the same subconscious feeling 
of loyalty to the Aryan ideal, though he finds his inspiration 
in the pages of English history instead of in the annals of Indian 
national life. Indian loyalty to the British Empire and the 
British Crown is therefore in its fullest content a feeling of 
devoted attachment to those Aryan principles of conduct and 
Aryan national ideals which Indians as well as Britons have 
upheld both in peace and in war, in life and in death. Let us 
therefore beware lest our own disloyalty to those principles 
and ideals should inspire Indians with suspicion or distrust, 
and let us not flatter ourselves that the magnificent demon- 
stration of loyalty which the War has called forth from all 
classes is an expression of complete satisfaction with things 
as they are and of gratitude for the blessings of British rule. 
If national art has any significance as an indication of the 
springs of human action and as an index of human progress, 
not even the most optimistic Anglo-Indian, looking at the 
monuments of British rule in India, can maintain that we have 
yet gone so far even as Alcbar went in restoring India to the 
full height of her former Aryan civilisation. This we have 
not yet done either on the material or spiritual plane, and 
India, on the whole, still values spiritual more than worldly 
gifts, though Europe would persuade her that she is lacking 
in true insight. 

The so-called progressive politician, who treats Indian 
history as a book no longer read, tells us that we must look 
forward and not backward ; that we can no longer build as 
Akbar built ; that India can gain little or nothing by studying 
her own past ; that East must be "West and forget that she 
was East. Pretending to be a realist with a scientific political 
programme based upon actualities, he is ignorant of the funda- 

X 



INTRODUCTION 

mental economic and social conditions by which a prudent 
and far-seeing State policy must be governed and blind to the 
things of everyday Indian life which pass before his own eyes. 
The logic of history, ancient or modern, Indian or European, 
is lost upon him. 

But to the Briton who can divest himself of insular racial 
prejudices and of the German habit of thinking, the study 
of Indo-Aryan political science will have a deep significance, 
though he may not take a special interest in Indian affairs. 
For the ancient Aryan rulers of India were confronted by 
political, economic, and social problems in many ways similar 
to those with which modern British statesmen and social 
reformers are struggling, and their solutions of them, according 
to all the evidence of history, were much more satisfactory 
to the people at large than any which modern Europe has 
found. The freedom and general happiness attained by the 
people of Great Britain with the help of Parliamentary in- 
stitutions and the richest revenues of the world can hardly 
be compared with that which Indians within the Aryan pale 
enjoyed both before and after the fifth century a.d. — the time 
which we regard as our Dark Ages, and theirs. The Indo- 
Aryan constitution, built up by the highest intelligence of 
the people upon the basis of the village communities, and not 
wrung from unwilling war-lords and landlords by century-long 
struggles and civil war, secured to the Indian peasant-proprietor 
not only the ownership of the land, but very considerable 
powers of self-government. The powers of the central Govern- 
ment, though they might often be abused, were at least 
delegated to it by the people themselves, and limited b}'' 
unwritten laws which by common consent were given a 
religious character. An interesting illustration of the strength 
of such laws is given by Mr Sidney Webb in the preface to 
Mr Matthai's valuable book on Village Government in British 
India. Officially the Indo-Aryan political s^^stem has long 
been regarded as dead. But, says Mr Webb, an able Collector 
of long service in Central India, who was totally unaware of 
any survival of that system in the villages over which he ruled, 

xi 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

was led to make inquiries into the matter. ^ He then dis- 
covered " in village after village a distinctly effective, if 
somewhat shadowy, local organization, in one or other form 
of panchayat, which was, in fact, now and then giving decisions 
on matters of communal concern, adjudicating civil disputes, 
and even condemning offenders to reparation and fine." This 
form of local government, though it has no statutory warrant 
and is not recognised by British tribunals, has gone on silently 
functioning during centuries of ' Oriental despotism ' and 
under British rule, " merely by common consent and with 
the very real sanction of public opinion." When Indo- Aryan 
law and order prevailed in India in the long centuries before 
the Muhammadan invasions, the economic and political status 
of the Indian peasant was certainly far higher than that of 
the English peasant of the twentieth century, if the description 
of the latter's condition given by Mr Maurice Hewlett may 
be considered approximately true : " robbed, pauperised, 
terrorised, mocked with a County Council of landlords, a 
District Council of tenant-farmers, and a Parish Council without 
powers." 2 

The British factory-hand and dweller in city slums sings 
when he goes to war because war is for him a release from 
servitude and misery often far more degrading than the Indian 
caste system at its worst. He does not sing in times of peace. 
He is then chained down to a daily Ufe in which there is no joy 
or freedom — ^the slavery of modern industrialism. He struggles 
vainly to free himself from it by the organisation of trade 
unions, and only adds to the political machine another form 
of tyranny which often is a menace to the whole imperial 
fabric. The co-operative trade and craft guilds of India 

^ A still more striking case illustrating the survival of Indo- Aryan institu- 
tions, silently functioning unknown to the British authorities, is that of the 
Indian master-builder, whose labours contributed so much to the making of 
Indian history. His existence and work in the present day were both unknown 
and unrecognised officially until the Government of India was led to make 
the specific inquiries which resulted in the remarkable revelations published 
in the Archaeological Survey's Report on Modern Indian Building, 1913. 

2 I<etter to the Daily News, November 11, 1916. 

xii 



INTRODUCTION 

helped the workman to enjoy Hfe, gave him self-respect and 
fostered his technical skill, and at the same time served reli- 
giously the interests of the State. The student of Indian 
history may also be led to consider whether the Imperial 
Parliament of Great Britain, constituted as it now is on more 
or less empirical lines, is really more efficient as political 
machinery than was the philosophic scheme of Indo-Aryan 
polity, in which the common law of the land, formulated by the 
chosen representatives of the people, had a religious as well 
as a legal sanction, and represented the highest power of the 
State to which even the king and his ministers must bow. 
It will be a surprise to many readers to discover that the 
Mother of the Western Parliaments had an Aryan relative 
in India, showing a strong family likeness, before the sixth 
century B.C., and that her descendants were a great power in 
the State at the time of the Norman Conquest. 

Perhaps the most conspicuous fault of historians of India 
has been the inveterate habit of regarding Buddhism, Brah- 
manism or Hinduism, and Muhammadanism as three entirely 
independent camps, standing widely apart and representing 
irreconcilable religious ideas. In dealing with the history of 
Aryan rule in India it is neither necessary nor desirable to 
enter deeply into questions of sectarian dogma or philosophical 
disputes ; but it is of vital importance to show as accurately 
as possible the relationship between different schools of 
religious thought and their influence upon political ideas, for 
there can be no true history of India which separates politics 
from religion. Into this very wide field of historical research 
I have endeavoured to bring forward the evidence of Indian 
art to correct the errors of previous writers, whose misinter- 
pretation of it has often led their readers hopelessly astray. 
Even more important is it to understand the psychological 
standpoint upon which Indo-Aryan political science is pivoted. 
The great thinkers and social reformers of India, beginning 
with the Buddha, grasped firmly one of the eternal verities, 
generally ignored in Western politics, that ideas, good or evil, 
are more potent than armaments — for the spirit survives when 

xiii 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 






the body is destroyed. It is therefore no less important for 
the State to purge the body poUtic of evil thinking than it is 
to stay an epidemic or provide efficient means of national 
self-defence. For that reason the philosophical debating 
halls, in which king and commoner met on terms of equality, 
always played a more important part in Indo-Aryan politics 
than councils of war, Acts of ParHament, or royal edicts ; and 
for the same reason the political education of the Indian masses 
in the Dark Ages of European history was probably far better 
than that which obtains in most European countries in the 
twentieth century. 

The breakdown of Indo-Aryan constitutional government 
under the stress of foreign aggression was more due to the 
weakness of human nature than to the defects of the system 
itself — just as the virtue of the British Parhament lies in the 
character and ability of its members rather than in its pecuHar 
constitution. Similar causes produce similar effects both in 
India and in Europe. Indo-Aryan polity, instructed by the 
Buddha and other great Aryan teachers of the mihtary caste, 
was firmly based upon the principle that right is might, or, 
as the Mahdbh'arata puts it, that " the heavens are centred 
in the ethics of the State." But it reckoned without the Huns 
and the sword of Islam as wielded by Turkish war-lords of 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, MahmQd of Ghazni and 
'Ala-ud-din. Indo-Aryan statesmen did not find that the 
illiteracy of the Indian masses prevented them from taking a 
considerable part in the management of their own affairs, 
for before the days of the printing press and modern journalism 
there were in India other means of instructing the people and 
a highly organised educational system which, judging by 
results, was far more efficient than the present one. Until 
British statesmen divest themselves of the fatal habit of 
judging Indian things by Western standards they will never 
see them in the right perspective. Indo-Aryan statesmen 
were not afraid of allowing the masses, including women, to 
vote, on account of their illiteracy — for the most learned and 
most representative Indians were often illiterate in the European 
xiv 



INTRODUCTION 

sense : Akbar, one of the most brilliant, successful, and learned 
statesmen of the sixteenth century, was one of them. British 
rule has not yet profoimdly affected conditions which have 
their root in times long before the beginnings of BngHsh 
history. 

It is not for the historian to offer a solution of modern 
political questions, but to provide material for the study of 
them. Having served an apprenticeship as a writer of Indian 
history in the study and exegesis of Indian artistic records, 
I now venture to use them to explain and amphfy the mass of 
literary, epigraphical, and other archaeological material which 
many writers, European as well as Indian, have collected and 
made the basis of their historical studies. For chronological 
data and statements of bare fact I can lay no claim to original 
research, and must express full acknowledgment for the use 
of the work of my predecessors in those directions. But the 
treatment of the subject and interpretation of facts are for the 
most part my own, and they often differ materially from those 
of other writers, a difference which must be ascribed to my 
different interpretation of the artistic record. As my inter- 
pretation of Indian art has won the general assent of my fellow- 
artists in Europe I cherish the hope that in the present work 
I may succeed in throwing new light upon the subject of Aryan 
rule in India. I have avoided as far as possible entering into 
controversies on points of purely archaeological int .rest, though 
it has been sometimes necessary to take a definite standpoint 
when important historical issues are at stake. The question 
of the age of the three most important works on Indo-Aryan 
polity, the KauHliya-artha-S astra, the Code of Manu, and that 
of Sukracharya, is one of them. It is generally agreed by 
Oriental scholars that the first relates to the time of Chandra- 
gupta Maurya and the second to the early centuries of the 
Christian era, when Buddhist ethics had deeply influenced the 
traditions of Brahmanism. The age of the Sukrd-nitisdra is 
a much-debated question. Many Indians ascribe to it a very 
great antiquity ; some European scholars take it to be a 
comparatively modern one, i.e. of the twelfth or iQit[te^O-th 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

century a.d. Both may be right from their respective stand- 
points, for all three of these codes undoubtedly contain a body 
of traditional Aryan law and custom of very remote antiquity, 
which can often be recognised in the traditions of modern 
Indian life. On the other hand, Sukracharya contains references 
to the use of explosives and military weapons which can hardly 
be referred to the Mauryan epoch or earlier. I have therefore 
taken the Sukrd-nitisdra as generally descriptive of Indo- 
Aryan society in the early Middle Ages, but have not hesitated 
to quote it as an authority on Indo- Aryan constitutional law 
and custom in previous times, when it seems only to explain 
or amplify parallel sections in Kautiliya's and Mann's codes. 
Similarly I have sometimes assumed Mann's laws to have been 
recognised in very early Aryan times, though the compilation 
itself belongs to a later period. When the philological evidence 
is obscure the historian is bound to rely on sruti rather than 
smriti. For the history of the Muhammadan conquest I have 
mostly used the material so abundantly provided by Muham- 
madan historians, only checking their accounts with the artistic 
evidence so as to remove the sectarian gloss which has falsified 
the interpretation of historical facts in exactly the same way 
as official German reports falsify the facts of modern history. 
The great development of Islamic culture in India is thus 
shown in its true aspect as a distinct branch of the Indo- Aryan 
tree, and not, as Fergusson and his followers have made it, 
a manifestation of inborn ' Turanian ' spirituality distinguishing 
Muhammadan ' culture ' from Hindu ' barbarism/ 

B, B, H, 



XVI 



CONTENTS 

PART I : ARYAVARTA BEFORE THE 
MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST 

lAPTER PAGE 

I. Aryans and Non- Aryans in Vedic India 3 

The One in Many : The Aryans in Mesopotamia : Anglo-Saxons 
and Indo-Aryans : The Matriarchal and Patriarchal 
Systems : Aryan Village Organisation : Early Aryan 
Religion. 

II. The Epic Age 33 

Political Development in the Epic Age : The Ramayana and 
Mahabharata : The Surya-vamsa and the Chandra- vamsa. 

III. The Buddha as a Statesman and Sociai. 

Reformer 45 

The Advent of Gautama Buddha : The Differentiation of his 
Teaching from that of Brahmanism : The Organisation of 
the Sangha : Parliamentary Institutions in Buddhist 
India : The Buddha's Social and PoUtical Influence. 

IV. The Buddhist and Jain Sanghas — Ai^exander's 

Raid 57 

Aryan Genius for Organisation : The Work of the Buddhist 
Sangha before the Time of Asoka : Contact between 
Hellenic and Indo- Aryan Civilisation : The Persian Empire 
and Alexander's Raid into Northern India. 

V. The Mauryan Empire 66 

The Revolt in India and the Founding of the Mauryan Empire : 
Chandragupta and his Policy as an Imperialist : The 
Aryan Freeman : The Centralisation of the Village Com- 
munities : The Co-operative System in Ancient India : 
Roads and Waterways : Irrigation ; Department of Navi- 
gation : Chandragupta' s Capital and Municipal Govern- 
ment : Drink Tra£&c and GambUng : Department of 

6 xvii 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Agriculture : Adtninistration of Justice : The Imperial 
Council : Chandragupta's Daily Routine of Work : Court 
I/ife : Imperial Revenue : The Army and Navy : Chandra- 
gupta's Successor, Bindusara. 

VI. ASOKA 89 

Accession of Asoka : Buddhist and Jain Propaganda : Asoka's 
Early Life and Military Conquests : His Conversion : The 
Edicts : His Foreign Missions : General Assembly of the 
Sangha at Pataliputra : Asoka's State Pilgrimages : 
Progress of the Dharma in India and Beyond : Asoka as a 
Democratic Leader : Brahmanical Influence upon Buddhist 
Doctrine : Asoka as a Popular Educator : The Weakness 
of Buddhism as a Social and Political Creed : The Develop- 
ment of Buddhist Ritualism : Death and Canonisation of 
Asoka as a Buddhist Saint : Asoka's Private Life. 

VII. Maury AN Art 104 

The Monuments of Asoka's Reign : The Two Phases of Asokan 
Art : The King's Craftsmen and Aryan Artistic Traditions : 
' Persian Bell-shaped Capitals ' : The Sjrmbolism of the 
I/otus Flower : Buddhist Hermitages and Chapter-houses : 
The Popiilar Art of Bharhut and Sanchi : Indo-Aryan 
Symbolism ; the Swastika, Stiipa, the Holy Mountain and 
Tree : The Buddha worshipped as the Deity : The Stupa in 
Asoka's Time : The Temple of Bodh-Gaya : The Sikhara : 
Wooden and Stone Buildings in the Mauryan Epoch : The 
Continuity and Vitality of Indian Art Traditions : The 
Aniconic Symbolism of Asokan Sculpttire. 

VIII. The Break-up of the Mauryan Empire and the 

TuRKi Invasions 119 

Asoka's Successor, Dasaratha : The Break-up of the Mauryan 
Empire : The Sunga Dynasty : Pushyamitra revives the 
Great Horse-sacrifice : Buddhism and Brahmanism : 
Patanjali, the Sanskrit Grammarian, and the Revival of 
Brahman Scholarship : The Alleged Persecution of 
Buddhists by Pushyamitra : The End of the Sunga 
Dynasty : The Kanva Dynasty : Invasions of India by 
Turki Tribes : Menander and the Establishment of a Turki 
Buddhist Dynasty in the North- West Provinces. 

IX. The Aryanisation of Southern India — The 

KusHAN Empire 127 

The Shifting of Indo-Aryan Political Power Southwards : The 
Practical Application of Vedic Philosophy to Indian Life : 
Aryan Influence upon Early Dravidian Civilisation : The 
Dynasties of Southern India : Trade of Southern India in 
Early Times : The Rise of the Andhra Power : Popular 
xviii 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Buddhism and the Teaching of the Buddha : The Be- 
ginnings of Gandharan Art : Yoga in Early Buddhist 
Times : The Doctrine of Reincarnation : The Symbolism 
of Aryan Village-planning : Hellenistic Influence in the 
Kushan Empire : Mahayana Buddhism and the Spread of 
Buddhist Propaganda in China : The Extent of the 
Kushan Empire : Kanishka and Nagarjuna : Intercourse 
between India and the Graeco-Roman World : Kanishka 
summons a General Assembly of the Sangha : Kanishka' s 
Wars and Death : His Successors : Development of 
India's Maritime Trade and Colonies : Mahay anist and 
Hinayanist Art. 

X. The Gupta Empire 147 

The Beginning of the Gupta Era and the Indo- Aryan Revival : 
Chandragupta of the Gupta Line : The Buddhist Sangha 
in the Fourth Century a.d. : Chandragupta's Conquests : 
Aryan versus Turki Domination : Samudragupta and his 
Campaigns : The Revival of Sanskrit beaming : The 
Vaishnava Cult : Popular Education under the Gupta 
Emperors : The Gupta Recensions of the Indo-Aryan 
Epics. 

XI. India in Gupta Times 159 

The Code of Manu : The Influence of Buddhist Ethics upon 
Indo-Aryan Social Life : The Theory of Kingship : Imperial 
Taxation : The Ethics of Ritualistic Purity : The Relation- 
ship of the Sexes : The Law of Karma : The Accession of 
Vikramaditya : The Iron Pillar at Delhi : Vikramaditya's 
Conquests : Fa-Hien's Observations on the Condition of 
India : Indian Culture in Gupta Times : Religious 
Tolerance : The Principles of Indo-Aryan Religion. 

XII. The Huns in India — Gupta Art and Archi- 
tecture 171 

Kumaragupta : Indo-Aryan Imperialism, its Strength and 
Weakness : Skandagupta and Buddhist Teaching : The 
Hun Invasions : The Indo-Aryan Military Code : Skanda- 
gupta's War Finance : His Death : Puragupta : Baladitya 
and the Wars with the Huns : The Hun Ruler Toramana : 
Mihiragula's Savagery rouses a General Revolt : Defeat of 
the Huns by a Confederation of Indo-Aryan States : Effect 
of the Hun Invasions upon Indo-Aryan Social and Political 
Life : Gupta Architecture and the Derivation of the 
Sikhara. 

XIII. HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA '^ 187 

Northern India after the Defeat of the Huns : The Rise of the 
Chalukyan Power in the Dekhan : Pulakesin I : Harsha- 
Vardhana of Thaneshar restores the Fortunes of Aryavarta 

xix 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

CHAPTER PAGE 

and is opposed by Pulakesin II : Harsha's Court : Hiuen- 
Tsang and his Indian Pilgrimage : His Observations on 
the Character and Condition of the People and the Govern- 
ment of the Country : PubUc Instruction : The Universities : 
Nalanda : Hiuen-Tsang's Visit to the King of Kamarupa : 
He attends Harsha's Court and instructs the Emperor and 
his Sister in the Tenets of the Mahay ana School : Harsha's 
Personal Character : He convokes a General Assembly of 
the Sangha to listen to Hiuen-Tsang's Arguments : The 
Great Festival of the Trimurti : Indian PoUtical Life in 
the Seventh Century : The Hegira and the Influence of 
Buddhism on Islam. 

XIV. The Dekhan and Southern India from the 

Seventh to the Eleventh Centuries 212 

Pulakesin II, Ruler of the Dekhan : The Rise of Saivism in the 
Dekhan and Southern India : The Parliament of Rehgions 
and its Authority : The Historical Evidence of Temple 
Architecture : Fergusson's Misleading Classifications : The 
Early Saiva Revivalists : Sankaracharya and his Mission : 
Local Self-government in Southern India : The Sukrd-niti- 
sara on Caste and the Organisation of Village Life ; Craft- 
guilds and Mercantile Corporations ; Imperial Taxat- in ; 
The Jurisdiction of the King and his Officers ; Plan ling 
of the Royal Capital ; the King's Ministers ; Parks 
and Forests ; Administration of Justice ; the Ethics of 
Sukracharya : The Dravidian and Aryan Ideals : South 
Indian Inscriptions relating to Local Self-government : 
The Chola System of Government : Brahmanical 
' Tyranny ' : The Chola Kings and the Aryanisation of the 
South. 

XV. The Artistic Record of Southern India from 

THE Seventh to the Eleventh Centuries 242 



XVI. Islam's First Footing in India — ^Northern 
India from the Seventh to the Eleventh 
Centuries 247 

Harsha's Successor, Arjuna or Arunasa : Conflict with China 
and Tibet : The Arab Invasion of the Eighth Century : 
Effect upon Islam of Contact with Indo-Aryan Civilisa- 
tion : The Political Degeneration of Aryavarta : The 
Rajputs and Rajputana : Struggles with the Arabs : 
Rajput Culture : The Gurjara Kingdom : Kashmir and its 
Chronicles. 



XX 



CONTENTS 



PART II : THE MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST AND 
THE INDO-ARYAN RENAISSANCE 

CHAPTER FAGB 

I. Mahmud of Ghazni 279 

The Beginning of Turkish Domination in Islam : Mahmud of 
Ghazni and his Raids into India : Death of Mahmiid : His 
Character. 

II. The Afghan and Turkish Sui^tans of Dei.hi 290 

Fall of the Ghaznevide Empire : Revolt in India : The Afghan 
Dynasty of Ghur : Shihab-ud-din's Invasion of India : 
Defeat and Death of Prithivi-raja : Fall of Kanauj : Sack 
of Benares : Bihar raided : Qutb-ud-din, Sultan of Delhi : 
' Saracenic ' Culture and Indo-Aryan Art : The Political 
Ethics of Islam : Muhammadan Conquest of Gaur : 
Altamsh : The Khilji Dynasty : 'Ala-ud-din and his 
Kultur : Effect of his Policy upon Islam in India : Mubarik 
Khan : The Tughlak Dynasty : Tughlak Shah : Muhammad 
Tughlak and his Atrocities. 

III. FiRuz Shah 315 

Firuz Shah and his Rajput Mother : His Early Life and 
Accession to the Tlurone of Delhi : His Administrative 
Reforms : PubUc Works : Organisation of Slavery : The 
Social Programme of Islam. 

IV. The Psychological Effect of the Muhammadan 

Conquest 324 

The rapprochement between Hinduism and Islam : Development 
of the Aryanisation of the South : The Aryanisation of 
Islam and the Hindu Renaissance : Sunnis and Shiahs. 

V. Break-up of the Delhi Empire 335 

Musahnan Gaur and its Architecture : The Sultans of J aunpur : 
Husain Shah and his Patronage of Hindu Learning : The 
Ctdt of Satya-Pir : The J aunpur School of Islam : The 
Kulbarga Dynasty : The Gujerat Dynasty and Wars with 
the Rajputs of Mewar : The Portuguese in India : The 
Afghan Dynasty of Malwa : The Faruki Dynasty of 
Khandesh. 

xxi 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. Marco Polo 359 

India in the Thirteenth Century as described by Marco Polo. 

VII. The MoguIv Invasion 367 

Timur, the Ancestor of the Great Moguls, and his Invasion of 
India. 

VIII. Thk Founding of the Mogui, Empire 378 

Effects of the Mogul Invasion : The Sayyid Dynasty of Delhi : 
The I^odi Dynasty : Babur's Conquest. 

IX. The Turkish Dynasty of Bijapur 385 

Yusuf 'Adil Shah and the War with Vijayanagar : Political 
Influences in the Dekhan : Ismail 'Adil Shah I : The 
Struggle for Mastery in the Dekhan : Ibrahim 'Adil Shah I : 
Ibrahim dismisses Turkish and Mogul Officers : Friendly 
Relations with Vijayanagar : Asad Khan : Wars with 
Ahmadnagar : Death of Ibrahim. 

X. FaIvI. of Vijayanagar 399 

Ali 'Adil Shah renews the Alliance with Vijayanagar and 
attacks Ahmadnagar : The Musahnan League for the 
Destruction of Vijayanagar : The Battle of Talikota. 



XI. Hindu India in the Muhammad an Period — 

Chaitanya 407 

Village Life : Chaitanya's Birthplace : His Boyhood : Enters a 
Sanscrit Tol : Becomes the Head of a T61 : His Fame as 
a Pandit : Philosophical Contests : Visit to Gaya and 
Change in his Spiritual Outlook : His Mission ; Opposition 
from the Brahman Aristocracy : Popularity with the 
Masses : Influence upon Islam : Essence of his Teaching. 

XII. Babur 420 

Babur, his Character and Attitude towards Indian Life : 
Establishes his Capital at Agra : Defeat of the Rajputs : 
Administrative Measures and Public Works : Death. 

XIII. HUMAYUN 428 

Humayiin's Character : Fights with his Relatives for the 
Throne : Sher Khan defeats Humayiin and forces him 
to leave India. 

xxii 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV. Sher Shah's Rkign and the Restoration op 

THE Mogul Dynasty 437 

Sher Shah's Administrative Policy : Revenue System : Treat- 
ment of the Ryots : Military and Civil Organisation : His 
Campaigns : Takes Chitor : His Tomb at Sahseram : Salim 
Shah : Shaikh 'Alai and his Preaching : Muhammad 'Adil 
Shah and the Break-up of the Delhi Empire : Return of 
Humayiin and his Accidental Death. 

XV. Akbar : The Protectorate of Bairam Khan 450 

Accession of Akbar : Bairam Khan as Protector : Defeat and 
Death of Hemu at Panipat : Struggles with the Afghans 
of Bengal : Akbar assumes the Government : Bairam 
Khan's Rebellion and Death. 

XVI. Akbar as Ruler of Aryavarta 458 

Akbar and the Associates of his Boyhood : The Insubordination 
of his Generals : Murder of the Prime Minister by Adham 
Khan : Akbar's Marriage with a Rajput Princess : Raja 
Bihari Mall and Rajput Influence at Court : War with the 
Rana of Mewar : Afghan Rebellion in Bengal : Attempt on 
Akbar's Life : Akbar abolishes Taxes on Pilgrims : 
RebeUion of Mirza Hakim : Siege and Capture of Chitor : 
Founding of Fatehpur-Sikri : Faizi and Abul Fazl : Akbar's 
Life at Fatehpur-Sikri. 

XVII. Akbar as Ruler of Aryavarta {continued) 480 

War with Gujerat : Revolt of the Mirzas : War with the Afghans 
in Bengal : Todar Mall and his Financial Reforms : 
Akbar's Land Revenue Policy : Raja Man Singh's Cam- 
paign in Rajputana. 

XVIII. Akbar as Spiritual IvEader of Islam 492 

Akbar's Religious Studies and Views : The Debates in the 
Ibadat-Khana : The Imperial Library : Psychical Re- 
search : Akbar assumes the Spiritual Leadership of Islarn : 
Administration of the Crown Domains : Renewed Dis- 
turbances in Bengal and Gujerat. 

XIX. The Din-Ilahi S" 

The Dln-Ilahi and its Relationship to Indo-Aryan Religious 
Orders : Proclamation of the Din-Ilahi : Changes in Court 
Ceremonial and Ritual of Divine Service : Raja Todar Mall 
becomes Diwan of the Empire : Akbar's Reply to the 
Charge of Apostasy : Influence of the Din-Ilahi. 

xxiii 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

HAPTER PAGE 

XX. Akbae. as Chakra-vartin 520 

Akbar removes his Capital to Lahore : Defence of the North- 
west Frontier : A Mahdi Pretender : Death of Raja 
Birbal : Conquest of Sind, Kathiawar, Katch, and Orissa : 
Akbar Undisputed Master of the Ancient Aryavarta : His 
Administrative Policy : Claims Sovereignty over the 
Dekhan : Chand Bibi and the Defence of Ahmadnagar : 
Akbar leaves Lahore and assumes Command in the 
Dekhan : RebelUon of Prince Salim and Murder of Abul 
Fazl : Akbar's Domestic Troubles and Death. 

Index 539 

MAPS 

Ancient India 3 

From Fergusson's History of Eastern and Indian Architecture, 
by kind permission of Mr John Murray. 

India under Muhammadan Rule 279 

From Fergusson's History of Eastern and Indian Architecture , 
by kind permission of Mr John Murray. 



XXIV 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PLATE PAGE 

vi. Eastern Gateway of the Bharhut Stupa 

Frontispiece 

Belongs to about the third century B.C., and is one of the 
numerous monuments erected by Asoka, either to contain 
relics of the Buddha or to mark the sacred places hallowed 
by his memory. The illustration shows one of the four 
entrances to the pilgrims' procession path, which were 
placed at the cardinal points, and part of the stone rail 
enclosing it. The clustered pillar, surmounted by a lion, 
represents an imperial standard, and is an example of the 
fine craftsmanship of the Indo-Aryan masons under whose 
dnection Asoka' s monuments were planned and executed. 
They were State servants under the special protection of 
the Crown. The fact that foreign craftsmen who showed 
exceptional skiU were sometimes admitted into their ranks 
accounts for the frequent traces of Hellenic craftsmanship 
found in royal Indian monuments, but the inspiration of 
the art is always essentially Indian. See Chapter VII. 
Photo India Office. 

4 2. Indo-Aryan Vii,i,age Pi,ans 26 

A. Danddka, named after a Brahman's danda, or staff, and 

intended for an asvdma, or hermitage. 

B. Nandydvarta, or ' Abode of Bliss,' intended for a mixed 

population including all the four varnas. 
(Corrected from Ram Raz, essay on the Architectujre of the 
Hindus.) 

x,'3. The Buddha under the Bodhi Tree 48 

From a colossal statue at Anuradhapura, Ceylon, attributed 
by Dr Coomaraswamy to the second century a.d., but 
probably a century or two later. It represents the 
Buddha as he began to emerge from the state of profound 
meditation. 

/■ 4. Northern Gateway of the Sanchi Stupa 76 

The stiipa, like that at Bharhut, is one of Asoka' s monuments, 
but the elaborately carved gateways, reproducing ancient 
Indian town or village gateways, were added by different 
royal donors at later periods. See p. no. 

XXV 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

PLATE _ PAGE 

^5. Capitai, of Asoka's Pii<i.ar at Sarnath 96 

The pillar was erected by Asoka, reproducing an imperial 
standard, to mark the spot in the Deer Park at Sarnath, 
near Benares, where the Buddha preached his first 
sermon. It is another fine example of the handicraft of 
the Mauryan ' king's craftsmen.' The base of the capital 
represents the lotus ' with turned-down petals ' (see 
p. 106). Photo Archaeological Survey of India. 

\6. Buddhist Shrines from the Bharhut Scui,p- 

TURFS 110 

A. The Bodhi Tree enclosed by a shrine, representing an 

ancient Aryan village Council-house appropriated to the 
teaching of the Law. See p. 109. 

B. A village shrine of the third century B.C., showing the 

prototype of the later Hindu temple, with its garbha- 
griha, the ' Holy of Holies,' the antardla, a porch or 
verandah for the priests, and the mandapam, the assembly 
hall for the people. See pp. 116-117. 

,7. Buddhist Stupa from the Amaravati Scui^p- 

TURES 112 

The original marble slab is now in the Madras Museum. It 
shows a complete stupa with its gateways and the rail 
enclosing the pilgrims' procession path. The base of the 
stiipa itself was elaborately carved with a series of the 
reliefs by which the pilgrims were taught the principal 
events in the Buddha's lives and the various stages 
through which he passed before he obtained enlighten- 
ment. Amaravati was a great seat of Buddhist learning 
from the time of Asoka. The sculpture probably belongs 
to the fifth or sixth century a.d. See p. 130. 



-8. Interior of the Kari,e Chapter-house 132 

Representing one of the assembly halls of the Buddhist 
Sangha carved in the living rock. The comparatively 
severe style of architectural sculpture shows it to belong 
to the earlier Hinayana school, which inherited the 
artistic traditions of the Vedic period. It is one of the 
great Buddhist works of the Mauryan dynasty. 

49. TempIvE of Bodh-Gaya, Restored 144 

From the Annual Report of the Indian Archaeological Survey, 
Eastern Circle, 1908-9, by kind permission of H.M. 
Secretary of State for India in Council. 

xxvi 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PLATE 



,/i0. travei.i.brs or pn^grims i^istening to a vir.i,age 

Kathak 154 

From a nineteenth-century Indian painting. A group of 
travellers or pilgrims are gathered round a fire in the 
courtyard of a dharmasala, or rest-house, and listen 
intently to a village story-teller. The painter, an Indian 
Rembrandt, has tried to imitate the chiaroscuro of 
European pictures, but has kept to traditional Indian 
technique, using gold for the fire and its reflection on 
the ground. Collection of the Government Art Gallery, 
Calcutta. 

vii. Stbi,E op Naram-Sin 180 

See pp. 1 1 2-1 1 3, 1 81-182. In the Louvre. Photo Mansell. 

12. Pai^ace of Sennacherib at Nineveh 182 

Shown in Layard's Nineveh, 2nd Series, Plate XVI. From 
the reproduction in the author's Ancient and Medieval 
Architecture of India, by kind permission of Mr John 
Murray. See pp. 113 and 182. 

13. Vishnu Shrine, Barwar Sagar, Centrai, Pro- 

vinces 184 

A shrine with a typical Vishnu sikhara, characteristic of the 
Gupta period, probably derived from the watch-tower of 
an Aryan royal palace. Like the standards of Aryan 
royalty it was crowned by Vishnu's blue lotus flower with 
turned-down petals, a symbol of world-dominion. In 
this case the mandapam, or assembly hall of the people, 
has not been added to the front of the shrine, which 
consists only of the garbha-griha, the deity's throne- 
room, and the antarala, or porch for the attendant 
priests. 

1 14. ViSHVAKARMA ChAITYA HoUSE, ElLORA 186 

Probably the Guildhall of the masons who carved the 
monasteries and temples of EUora. 

15. Trimurti Sculpture, Klephanta 204 

(M. Victor Goloubeff's photo.) Probably of the later Gupta 
period. It represents the Three Aspects of the One 
Eternal — Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, 
and Siva the Destroyer. In this sculpture, one of the 

xxvii 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

PLATE PAGE 

noblest of Indian classic masterpieces, the place of 
Brahma, on the right, is taken by Parvati, Siva's sakti, 
as the Creatrix. See pp. 184-185. For a full descrip- 
tion of the Elephanta sculptures see the anthox' s Ancient 
and Medieval Architecture of India and Ideals of Indian 
Art (Murray). 

4 16. vSivA Ti:mpi.k at Bad ami 216 

A small but one of the most perfect examples of Indian temple 
architecture, probably built by the royal craftsmen near 
the time when Badami was capital of the Chalukyan 
kingdom, or about the seventh century a.d. Photo 
Archaeological Survey of India. 

^ij. Bronze Statuktte of AppARSWA^n 226 

One of several statuettes of the Saiva revivalist, a predecessor 
of Sankaracharya, now in the Colombo Museum. He 
lived about the sixth century a.d., but the sculpture 
belongs to the tenth or eleventh century, the great Chola 
period. See p. 245. 

i 18. Interior of a Modern Tempi^e Mandapam 232 

A very good example of nineteenth-century Indian building 
craft — -the assembty hall of the Diirga Temple at Benares, 
popularly known as the Monkey Temple, because the 
monkeys in the neighbourhood are fed by the priests 
from the worshippers' offerings. The temple mandapam 
was the assembly hall of the Indo- Aryan village com- 
munity. 

19. The Great Tempi^e, Tanjore 240 

Built by the Chola emperor Rajaraja I about the beginning of 
the eleventh century. View from north-east end of court 
to right of the entrance. 

A 20. Bronze Statuette of Nataraja 244 

From the Tanjore temple. One of the masterpieces of the 
Chola period. See p. 246. 

421. Kandarya Mahadeva TEMPI.E, Khajuraho 264 

Khajuraho, the ancient capital of the Chandela dynasty, in 
Bundelkhand, is now deserted, but its splendid temples, 
about thirty in number, still testif}' to the genius of the 
Indian master-bviilder. Most of them were built about 
the beginning of the eleventh century. The Kandarya 
Mahadeva temple, thotigh dedicated to Siva, is an 
xxviii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PLATE PAGE 

elaboration of the Vishnu type of temple (Plate 13), 
characteristic of the Gupta period and of North Indian 
temple architecture generally. The contemporary temple 
of Tanjore (Plate 19) shows the typical Siva temple, 
derived from the ancient stupa, which is most cha- 
racteristic of Southern India, where the Saiva cult is 
predominant. To a Saiva worshipper there is no in- 
consistency in placing a Siva image in a Vishnu shrine, 
for Siva to him is Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva — the Three 
in One. 

22. SURYA Tl)MPI,B AT MARTAND 272 

Built by Ivalitaditya in the eighth century a.d. The trefoil 
arches are derived from the niche of a Buddhist shrine, 
following the shape of the image with its aureole. 

23. Interior of the Jami' Masjid, Ahmadabad 340 

Built by Ahmad Shah of Gnjerat. It follows closely the design 
of the Ranpur temple, built by Ahmad Shah's con- 
temporary, the Rana Kumbha of Chitor. See pp. 341- 
342. 

24. Jain Tempi^es at Pai^itana, with so-cai,i,ed 

Pathan Domes 342 

See pp. 342-343. 

25. Tower of Victory, Chitor 344 

Built by the Rana Kumbha to celebrate his victory over 
Mahmud Khilji of Malwa in 1440 (see p. 344) . The design 
of these splendid Hindu towers was adapted to the 
minarets of Indian mosques, as may be seen at Ahmada- 
bad and elsewhere. 

26. Baz Bahadur and Rupmati 354 

The attachment of Baz Bahadur to the Hindu songstress was 
a favourite subject with Indian painters. In this picture 
the pair are seen riding by night among the hills of Raj- 
putana, a torch-bearer in front lighting up the path. 
From an eighteenth-century Indian painting in the 
Calcutta Government Art Gallery. -\ 

, 27. TiMUR Enthroned, attended by Tributary 

Chieftains 37° 

From a Persian manuscript of the sixteenth century in the 
India Office Library (MS. 137, folio 71 verso), by kind 
permission of H.M. Secretary of State for India in Council. 

xxix 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

PLATE PAGE 

The picture is entitled in the original " The Seating on 
the Throne of the Ivord of the Conjunction after the 
killing of the Amir Husain," and represents Timiir receiv- 
ing the homage of tributaries after his accession. It is 
no doubt the work of one of the Mogul court painters, 
possibly of Babur's or Humayiin's time, but more 
probably Akbar' s. 

4 28, (i) Tomb of Ibrahim 'Adii. Shah II at Bijapur. 
(2) Tomb of Muhammad 'Adii, Shah at 
Bijapur 394 

Two typical examples of Bijapiir architecture. The great 
dome of Muhammad's tomb is larger than the Pantheon 
at Rome, and is a triumph of the Indian master-builder's 
engineering skill. By an ingenious arrangement of 
pendentives, arranged in the form of a lotus, the huge 
weight of the dome is balanced within the interior of the 
building, in.stead of being thrown against heavy external 
buttresses according to the more clumsy Roman system. 

29. Thk ' BivBphant Stabi.es/ Vijayanagar 406 

It is highly improbable that this building was originally 
designed for elephant stables. It is much more likely to 
have been the mosque built by Ramraj for his Muham- 
madan bodyguard. Though the orientation is not strictly 
orthodox, in other respects it closely resembles the design 
of a mosque. 

30. (i) Tomb of Shkr Shah at Sahseram. (2) Tomb 

OF HUMAYUN AT DBI^HI 446 

Tike most Muhammadan tombs, these two are extremely 
characteristic of the men for whom they were built, the 
massive grandeur of Sher Shah's monument showing a 
marked contrast to the pompous but rather tawdry 
elegance of Humayun's, designed in the Persian taste 
affected by him. 

v3i. Akbar entertained by his Foster-brother 458 

From one of a series of pictures painted by Akbar' s orders to 
illustrate the history of his reign, the Akbar-ndma. The 
picture represents Akbar entertained by his foster- 
brother, 'Azam Elhan, at Dipalpur, Panjab, in 1571. 
The names of the artists, all Hindus, are inscribed upon 
it : J agan (outline) , Sur Das (colour) , Madhu (por- 
traits). From the original in the Indian Section of the 
Victoria and Albert Museum, by kind permission of the 
Director and Secretary. 
XXX 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PLATE PAGE 

32. The Siege of Chitor 4^6 

The destruction of a tower, caused by the explosion of a mine 
during the vSiege by Akbar in 1567. From the Akbar- 
ndma Series in the Indian Section of the Victoria and 
Albert Museum, by kind permission of the Director and 
Secretary. The picture is a double one and the reproduc- 
tion shows one half of it. The artists' names are 
Muskina (outline), Thura (colour). 

J 33. (i) The J ami' Masjid, Fatehpur-Sikri. (2) The 

Daftar Khana, Fatehpur-Sikri 47^ 

Akbar's royal mosque and his Record Office. See pp. 470 and 
4^6-4^7 . A full description of the buildings at Fatehpur- 
Sikri is given in the author's Handbook to Agra and the Taj 
(l^ongmans) . 



XXXI 



CORRIGENDA 
At pp. 1 1 6, 117, and 182 garbha-griha has been misprinted garbha-grihya. 



PART I 

aryAvarta before the 
muhammadan conquest 



^xsi "is? 




Map of 

ANCIENT INDIA 

To illustrate Part I 

Miles I 

100 200 300 400 SOO* 



tob 




Copyright, -fohn.Muri'av. Itorid^n 



CHAPTER I 

ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS IN 
VEDIC INDIA 

INDIA, whether regarded from a physical or intellectual 
standpoint, is herself the great exemplar of the doc- 
trine of the One in Many which her philosophers 
proclaimed to the world. Though singularly varied both in 
climate and geographical character, there is one great force 
which regulates the rainfall and helps to fertilise the soil — 
the magnetic attraction of the tremendous mountain barriers 
which separate her from the main continent of Asia and hold 
up the onrush of the monsoon clouds. Always containing 
amongst her population an immense variety of racial elements, 
from the highest grade of civilisation to the lowest, there was 
from the earliest recorded times one dominant race whose 
religious theory and political institutions consolidated the 
loosely cohering particles of the State and made Indian history. 
From the time of Alexander's raid until the beginning of 
British rule India was always politically a self-contained 
state, in so far that no successful invader, once he had estab- 
lished a dynasty there, ever dreamt of extending his conquests 
further than her most northern boundaries, or beyond the 
ocean which surrounds her eastern and western shores. And 
in the domain of thought, though India has been more prolific 
in schools of philosophy and religion than any other country 
in the world, there runs through them all a vein of perception 
or insight which differentiates them from the characteristic 
bent of Western intellect and makes them distinctively Indian. 
Religion in the West is the light given from above which 
illuminates the path of life, but yet remains, for most men 
and women, remote from life itself. In India philosophy and 

3 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

religion have always been regarded as the essence of all sciences, 
and the mainspring of all the forces which control life in every 
aspect. 

The Aryan people who gradually imposed their civilisation 
upon the whole of India were closely related to that masterful 
race which in the first or second millennium before Christ 
began to dominate the shores and islands of the Mediterranean 
and the Euxine, whose intellectual power gained a supremacy 
in Europe not less than that won by their fellow-Aryans in 
India. But so far as the scanty evidence of early Vedic 
literature goes, the first Aryan invaders of India were pastoral 
and agricultural rather than seafaring folk, and their entry 
into India was chiefly through the north-western gateways 
of the Himalayan mountain wall. There is, indeed, every 
probability that some of the early Indo- Aryan settlements in 
the Panjab came by sea, through the Persian Gulf and up • 
the Indus — the route by which part of Alexander's expedi- 
tion returned to Babylon ; for it is now known that Babylon ! 
was ruled by an Aryan d^masty for about six hundred • 
years, and there is no doubt that the great cities of Meso- 
potamia were alwa^^s in close commercial intercourse with 
India. 

Modern archaeological research has thrown much light upon | 
the history of the Aryans in Western Asia. In the second I 
millennium B.C., or when the Aryans were pushing their way 
into Northern India, the Mitannians, an Aryan people worship- 
ping the nature-spirits of the Vedas, Surj^a, Varuna, and Indra, 
had founded a powerful kingdom between the Tigris and 
Euphrates, and the old Vedic tradition of the conflicts between 
the Devas and the Asuras can perhaps be referred to the struggles 
between the Aryan worshippers of Surya and the Seinites of | 
Assyria, who became subject to the kings of Mitanni. About .:' 
1746 B.C. the Kassites, another branch of the Arj^ans, made ■ 
themselves masters of Babylon, and thus an Aryan dynasty 
ruled over Babylonia for the following six hundred years. 
During these centuries it is more than probable that the 
Aryans of Mesopotamia assisted in the colonisation of the 

4 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

Panjab, making use of the sea-route between India and the 
Euphrates valley by which the Sumerians, the ancient Dravi- 
dian inhabitants of the Sea-I^and to the south of Babylon, 
must have come from India. A great impulse to Aryan 
immigration into the Panjab by sea probably came about 
1367 B.C., when after the death of King Dushratta — a name 
familiar in ancient Indian literature by the story of the Rdmd- 
yana — Mitanni was thrown into a state of anarchy, being 
harried on the east by the Assyrians and on the west by the 
Hittites, so that the only way of escape for the vanquished 
Aryan warriors would have been down the river to the sea. 

The theory that the Arj^ans, when first known to history, 
were semi-barbaric tribes who borrowed their civilisation 
from the more cultured races they conquered, both in India 
and in Europe, seems to be formed upon a wrong judgment 
of the archaeological evidence. The Vedas — the bedrock of 
Indo-Ar^'-an civilisation — are not the literature of an uncultured 
people, and they certainly are, on the whole, Aryan and not 
borrowed from Dravidian or other sources. They represent 
the culture of a race of warrior-poets and philosophers who 
despised the arts of commerce and lived mostly by agriculture, 
with one hand on the sword and the other on the plough. 
They built no temples, but worshipped nature-spirits with 
simple sacrificial rites which would leave little traces behind 
them for archaeological explorers to analyse. The Aegean, 
Babylonian, and Dravidian cultures which they added to 
their own stock and re-inspired with their own genius were 
essentially mercantile civilisations with a more limited spiritual 
outlook than the Aryan, though in the nature of things they 
would leave more material evidence of their existence for 
posterity, for they were more concerned with the happiness 
which lies in material possessions than in spiritual thoughts 
and the endeavour to realise the high destiny of the human 
race. 

The Indo- Aryan classification of society into four categories — 
intellectuals, militarists, merchants, and labourers — was not 
merely a description of local conditions in Aryavarta but a 

5 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

general one indicative of the four grades of culture which 
are co-ordinated in the progress of civilisation. It was the 
noblest characteristic of Indo-Aryan polity that it was always 
based upon a just appreciation of the respective values of these 
four powers governing the destiny of mankind. Though undue 
preference might sometimes be given to Aryan intellect, racial 
and social prejudices were never so strong that the great 
thinkers of alien stock did not receive due honour. It was 
only when Aryan civilisation was decadent that caste, as it is 
now understood, became a hindrance to intellectual progress. 
Neither the victories of brute force nor the seductions of 
material prosperity are found dominating the pages of Indo- 
Aryan history. The search for knowledge was a reUgious 
quest which absorbed the highest energies of the Aryan State. 
Those who contributed most to the happiness and progress of 
mankind — the inspired religious teacher, the wisemen of every 
class, and all who have loved and helped their fellow-beings — 
were those whom India has honoured and cherished in her 
memory. 

It is a profound misunderstanding of history to maintain 
that the Aryan genius was inartistic and that Aryan civilisation 
was a borrowed one. The Aryans, as all poets and artists do, 
borrowed their material where they could find it ; but it was 
their own creative genius which gave the matter new and 
higher forms and inspired it with deeper thoughts. And 
because of their artistic genius and power of adapting them- 
selves to their environment, Aryan civilisation in Greece, 
Persia, and India, despite its common origin, had an indi- 
viduality of its own — borrowed perhaps in the sense that a 
plant borrows nutriment from the soil in which it grows. In 
each case also the Aryan stock, on account of its adaptability 
to its environment, was crossed with indigenous plants of a 
lower order, and according to a natural law evolved a higher 
state of culture from the union ; but it is not for the historian 
to determine whether the Potter or the pot should be given 
the greater credit for the result. 

Aryan civilisation in India was not a reflex or a by-current 
6 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

of that which had its origin in Southern Europe. It was 
India herself who moulded it in her own image, directed its 
endeavours and inspired its ideals. And the local environment 
which gave Indo-Aryan thought its special character and 
coloured its whole outlook upon life was the north-western 
region of the Himalayas and the valleys of the great rivers 
which have their sources there. That was, and is still, India's 
holy land. However remote from it their migrations went, 
the Aryans carried with them the legends of their Himalayan 
home. The names of the Vedic nature-gods brought into 
India by the first Aryan invaders — Surya, Agni, Mitra, Varuna, 
and others — are vague memories of the past, but every Hindu 
temple, ancient or modern, perpetuates the early Aryan 
veneration for Siva, the blue-necked, snow-crowned moun- 
tain ; for Parvati the Spring-maiden, Himalaya's fair daughter, 
Siva's bride ; for Meru, Vishnu's sacred mountain, the pivot 
of the universe ; and for I^akshmi, the breaking of day over 
the Himalayan peaks. And not only are the Himalayan sacred 
shrines still the cherished goal of the pilgrim and the centre 
of popular Hindu worship, but even the intellectual Brahman 
uses these names for symbols of cosmic forces and for the 
concepts of his philosophy. 

The description of the old English village communities in 
Sleswick and Jutland given by a well-known historian, ^ and 
the characteristics ascribed to the ancestors of the Anglo- 
Saxon race, correspond closely with what is known of the 
early Aryan settlements in India from their literary records 
and from traditional evidence. The Indo-Aryan resembled 
the Anglo-Saxon in his detestation of the restraints of city life 
and his love for the independence which agriculture and the 
organisation of village communities gave him. " Each little 
farmer-commonwealth was girt in by its own border or ' mark,' 
a belt of forest or waste or fen which parted it from its fellow 
villages, a ring of common ground which none of its settlers 
might take for his own, but which sometimes served as a 
death-ground where criminals met their doom and was held 

^ J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, pp. 3-4. 

7 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

to be the special dwelling-place of the nixie and the will-o'-the- 
wisp. . . . Inside this boundary the ' township,' as the village 
was then called, from the ' tun ' or rough fence and trench that 
served as its simple fortification, formed a ready-made fortress 
in war, while in peace its entrenchments were serviceable in 
the feuds of village with village or house with house. , . . The 
holdings of the freemen clustered round a moot-hill or sacred 
tree where the community met from time to time to order 
its own industry and to frame its own laws. Here plough- 
land and meadow-land were shared in due lot among the 
villagers, and field and homestead passed from man to man. 
Here strife of farmer with farmer was settled according to 
the ' customs ' of the township as its ' elder men ' stated them, 
and the wrong-doer was judged and his fine assessed by the 
kinsfolk ; and here men were chosen to follow headman or 
ealdorman to hundred court or war." ^ 

The Anglo-Saxon ' ceorls ' corresponded with the Indo- 
Ar^^an Kshatriyas, the fighting men of the clan, who in early 
times took precedence over the priests, or Brahmans, and were 
the spiritual leaders of the people. The name varna, or 
colour, which was the Vedic word for social grade or caste, 
seems to imply that the blood-bond which " gave both its 
military and social form to Old English society " was also 
the ruling principle in the early Indo-Aryan social system, 
though afterwards the idea of ritualistic purity grew into and 
eventually superseded it. 

The parallel ceases abruptly when chronological coincidences 
are sought for. Indo-Aryan civilisation is one of the oldest 
in the world ; the Anglo-Saxon one of the most recent. When 
Hengist and Horsa with their semi-civilised followers landed 
on the Isle of Thanet in the fifth century a.d., the Indo-Aryan 
tradition already went back for thousands of years; and the 
first Aryan invaders were not less venerated by the Indian 
people who came within the Aryan pale than were the 
gods of the old Norse mythology by our Anglo-Saxon fore- 
fathers. Indo-Aryan civilisation was a structure of venerable 

^ Green, he. cit. 

8 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

antiquity before the corner-stones of the British Empire had 
been well and truly laid. 

There is another distinction, not less marked, between the 
early period of Indo-Aryan history and that of the English 
nation. The Jutes, Angles, and other Northern tribes which 
helped to form the English stock won their footing on British 
soil solely by their superior organisation and fighting qualities 
and not by force of intellect. In civilisation they were often 
on a far lower level than the people they overcame. But 
the primitive religion of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors took 
no root in Britain, and when the barbarian sword was sheathed 
the culture of Athens and Rome began to assert its spiritual 
supremacy over the whole of Western Europe ; and this 
culture at that time derived its highest inspiration from Asia. 

The Aryan conquest of India, on the other hand, was no 
war of extermination, fierce and bitter though the struggle 
may have been at the beginning. The pioneers of Indo-Aryan 
civilisation, like their fellow-Aryans in Southern Europe, won 
their way even more effectually by their superior intellectual 
qualities than by their fighting strength. Though for many 
centuries holding themselves proudly aloof from the non- 
Aryan races and jealously guarding their spiritual inheritance 
from profanation by the uninitiated, their laws, political 
institutions, and religious ideas gradually became, for the vast 
majority of the people, the warp and weft of Indian life, even 
for the millions in whose veins no trace of Aryan blood can 
now be found. 

The student of Indian history must not, however, make 
generalisations of this kind go too far. It is probable that 
the Aryans were always numerically a very minute fraction of 
the people of India ; and even among those who called them- 
selves Aryan there were many of mixed blood. It was by 
spiritual rather than physical ties that Aryans and non- Aryans 
were gradually bound together into a political unity with an 
abiding sense of nationality. In a very considerable propor- 
tion the non-Aryans retained their vernacular languages and 
their social customs. The Dravidians, and doubtless other 

9 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

non-Aryans, had a settled village system before the Aryans 
entered India which was not entirely superseded but rather 
linked on to the Aryan system ; for it was a fixed principle 
of Aryan government that the social customs and proprietary 
laws of conquered people should always be respected. Thus 
the primitive non-Aryan village system continued to exist 
side by side with the Aryan, and long survived the break-up 
of Aryan political organisation. But the fact that at the 
present time possibly two-thirds of Indian villages belong to 
a non-Aryan, or what is now known as the raiyatwdri revenue 
system, does not show that Aryan civilisation never affected 
more than one-third of the Indian population. It merely 
indicates that when Aryan law and organisation relaxed their 
hold upon Indian society its Dravidian or non-Aryan sub- 
stratum was unable to resist the disintegrating power of alien 
ideas introduced by the new Aryan rulers of India when they 
were groping blindly in the darkness of India's unknown 
history. 

The historian who deals with a vast country like India must 
inevitably indulge in generalisations which will seem mis- 
leading if applied to particular provinces or to any one of the 
numerous races which at one time or another came within the 
Aryan pale. A true history of India must be a synthesis 
rather than an analysis. It is therefore superfluous to attempt 
to describe in detail the peculiarities of non-Aryan village 
systems, but it is necessary to indicate briefly the broad 
distinctions between them and the Aryan, The Aryan system 
was a scientific organisation based upon sanitary laws and 
inspired by high ethical and social ideals. It was a scheme of 
communal village life, worked out by the practical philosophy 
of one of the most highly gifted of the races of mankind, in 
which each section of the communit}'- and each individual 
member of it took their allotted shares of work for the common 
weal, not under the compulsion of an autocrat or of a ruling 
caste, but by a clear perception of mutual advantage and a 
voluntary recognition of superior intellectual leadership. 

The non-Aryan were empirical systems of a primitive agri- 
10 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

cultural type, such as are found in many countries. These 
primitive village communities were loosely knit together by 
tribal customs and motives of self-interest, but they possessed 
but little capacity for self -improvement so long as they remained 
outside Aryan influence and guidance. The history of Aryan 
village life is contained in Indo- Aryan sacred literature ; its 
traditional organisation is preserved in the canonical books 
of the Indian craftsman and in the planning of Indian temples 
and towns. The Aryan village was the basis of Indo-Aryan 
polity, and its history is the real history of India. The non- 
Aryan village system has survived and served as the founda- 
tions of the Anglo-Indian land revenue system, but before it 
was developed imder Aryan inspiration it had no recorded 
history, literature, or art, and its part in the evolution of 
Indian civilisation had been almost a negligible factor. 

Of all the non- Aryan races which inhabited India before 
the Aryan immigration it has been assumed, with good reason, 
that the most civilised were the Dravidians, and we can gather 
from the study of primitive Dravidian sociology in aboriginal 
Indian tribes of the present day what part Dravidian institu- 
tions took in the formation of the Indo-Aryan village system. 
The indigenous Dravidian system was in all probability the 
foundation upon which the Indo-Aryan economic super- 
structure was built. The Dravidian tribesmen were generally 
nomad hunters living in the forest, and their social system 
differed from the Aryan in being matriarchal instead of patri- 
archal. The mothers and their children formed the nucleus 
of a settled society ; the fathers were the hunters of a different 
tribe whose occupation of supplying food for the common 
meals kept them often away from the village. The men and 
women of the same village had separate quarters. All the 
tribal social customs, including marriage, were on a com- 
munal basis — ^the children were the offspring of the intercourse 
which took place when the young men and women of different 
tribes met and danced together in the forest glades at the 
festivals of the seasons. In the more settled communities 
the Dravidian mothers added to the common food supplies 

II 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

by collecting edible roots and forest produce which could 
be found near the village, and began a regular sj^stem of 
cultivation in the perfection of which they were helped, 
according to tradition, by the friendly teaching of Aryan 
rishis who had retired to the peaceful seclusion of the forest 
for meditation. The agricultural lands of which the Dravidian 
tribes thus became possessed were also communal property, 
held in turns by different groups of cultivators according to 
the redistribution made periodically at the village meetings. 

The respective duties of the mothers and of the able-bodied 
men in this ancient communal system were thus well defined. 
The fathers had little concern with the affairs of their own 
children — all the men and women of the same tribe were as 
brothers and sisters. It is easy to understand how all the 
inborn religious instincts of the people became centred in the 
mother rather than in the father of the family, who did not 
live in the village and often was unknown to the children. 
They could never realise the conception of the Fatherhood of 
God : the Earth-Mother who in times of distress would demand 
a child-victim from her worshippers embodied all their ideas 
of the divine. India was their mother, not their father. 

The elder men of the village, past efficient work as hunters, 
also had their share in the communal life. When the children 
were old enough they took charge of their education, teaching 
them all the lore of the forest, the habits of its wild denizens, 
the use of the weapons of the chase, and the traditional laws 
and customs of the tribe. The village grove where the children 
were taught, and where the elders discussed the affairs of the 
community, became the school, the parliament house, and the 
temple of the tribe. 

This Arcadian scheme of life, delightful in its primitive 
simplicity and progressive up to a certain point, had one fatal 
defect — that while it helped to bring all the inhabitants of a 
village up to the tribal standard of efficiency, it also tended to 
suppress any exceptional personal aptitudes and individual 
efforts at improvement. It produced a kind of socialistic 
despotism, not unknown in our own times, as tyrannical in 
12 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

its own way as autocracy. Any member of the tribe possessed 
of more than average abiUty who dared to question the 
authority of tribal customs risked the punishment of immediate 
death or the possibly worse penalty of being expelled from 
the tribe. But rebels and reformers there were in those days 
as in this, and those adventurous spirits who escaped the 
anger of their fellow-tribesmen and the perils of the untracked 
jungle would band themselves together as outlaws, preying 
upon the more peaceful tribes and, when occasion offered, 
carrying off their women to their hill-forts, where Durga, the 
Inaccessible, the Terrible, was worshipped as the Mother with 
bloody sacrifices. 

It was amongst these bandit tribal offshoots, rather than 
the original Dravidian stock with communal customs, that the 
ideas of kingship, monogamous marriage, and individual owner- 
ship of property developed. A successful leader would natu- 
rally command more authority among them than he would 
in the more conservative and less aggressive society. A wife 
taken by force would remain the property of the captor, and 
cultivated land or other spoil won in plundering raids would 
be divided amongst the raiders. At the same time, the poten- 
tialities of a higher development of culture were often greater 
in this predatory state of society than they were in the other, 
for it always attracted the more intelligent and enterprising 
members of the village communities. In its lowest stage it 
produced the ferocious forest bandits regarded by the Aryans 
with horror and disgust as rdkshasas, or demons, and it 
culminated in the powerful Dravidian kingdoms which the 
Aryans gradually subdued by superior arms and superior 
intellect. But in all grades of Dravidian civilisation the 
primeval matriarchal principle remained as the basis of the 
law of inheritance and the foundation of religious beliefs. 

Such, no doubt, were some of the varied conditions of 
Dravidian society when the first Aryan tribesmen, eating meat 
and drinking an intoxicating liquor made from soma juice — 
originally a fair-skinned hardy race of mountaineers — descended 
into the plains of India, perhaps many centuries before they 

13 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

succeeded in founding a dynasty in the Euphrates valley, but 
not before they had developed a highly organised military 
system and were well advanced in the science of agriculture. 
They were cheerful, freedom-loving folk, full of the joy of life, 
singing songs to the good spirits who guarded their homesteads 
and cattle and aided them in winning the fruits of the earth — 
songs which had a magic power to bless the daily toil in field 
or workshop and gave them a kindly feeling towards their 
neighbours, Aryan and non-Aryan, in times of peace. But 
when, summoned to war by their chieftains or roused to defend 
the homes and land they loved, they yoked their horses to 
their fighting cars, strung their bows and took up sword and 
spear, they were fierce and relentless enemies, going into battle 
inflamed by heavy draughts of soma juice, led by their bards 
shouting the tribal war-songs, and preferring death to dishonour 
of the Aryan name. 

Early Indo- Aryan society was, like that of the Homeric age 
in Greece, a patriarchal system in which the father instead of 
the mother was the head of the joint family, and the warrior, 
instead of the hunter or bandit, was the leader of the tribe. 
But war was not the only or chief occupation of the Aryan 
tribesmen. Cattle-farming and agriculture were their principal 
means of sustenance ; predatory warfare was incidental to 
inevitable tribal quarrels, but not the sole end of existence. 

The Aryans were a far more cultured race, but their organi- 
sation resembled in some respects that of the Dravidian robber 
tribes. The Aryan patriarchal joint-families were grouped 
round the chieftain's hill-fort, which was the centre for mutual 
defence, for the common tribal sacrifices, and the meeting- 
place of the Sdbhd — the assembly of the householders. There 
appears to have been no recognition of communal rights either 
in agricultural land or in live stock, but only in the common 
pastures to which the chief herdsman daily drove their cattle. 

The first Aryan settlers were constantly being pushed further 
south and east by the steady influx of others of the same 
race, some of whom in the course of centuries brought the 
experience of city life and of agriculture in the plains of 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

Mesopotamia, Aryan culture was thus gradually differen- 
tiated from non-Aryan not only by greater proficiency in the 
arts of peace and war, but also by the richness and variety 
of its agricultural resources, for the Aryans brought the millets, 
barley, wheat, and oil-seeds of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 
to supplement the indigenous rice-crops of the non-Aryan 
agriculturists in the plains of India. 

As to when this Aryan immigration into India first began 
and when it ceased authorities differ very widely. But whether 
it commenced 5000 or 3000 years before Christ this much 
is certain, that in the course of centuries a process of assimila- 
tion went on by which eventually the Indo-Aryan village 
system was evolved, having for its foundation the communal 
principle of the primitive Dravidian foreign settlement and 
for its superstructure the higher culture and organisation 
created by Aryan genius and dominated by Aryan spiritual 
ideals. The matriarchal system and the rudimentary culture 
of the Dravidian village both retained places in the scheme of 
Indo-Aryan civilisation. Dravidian kings were proud to claim 
descent, on their mothers' side, from ancient Aryan dynasties. 
Aryan forest hermits taught useful arts and higher spiritual 
truths in Dravidian village schools, so that the cruel Earth- 
Mother came to be the bride of the Aryan Sun-god and the 
bringer of prosperity; while the dread Durga — the religious 
cult of the brigand and outlaw — was transformed into the 
beauteous wife of the Great Ascetic, Siva, the teacher of 
spiritual wisdom and the destroyer of ignorance. Popular 
legends of Krishna, the dark-skinned Indo-Aryan hero, guru 
of the Pandavas, were interwoven with the folk-lore of Dravi- 
dian village life, and he became the Protector of the people 
from tyranny and wrong, the divine Cowherd who danced 
with the village maidens at the spring festival and taught the 
love of God for man. By such teaching the higher spiritual 
intelligence of the Aryan with its great constructive genius 
gradually welded together Dravidian civilisation with its own, 
so that each contributed its best to the common stock and 
both went hand in hand along the path of progress. 

15 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

The great problem for Aryan thinkers, after their fighting 
men had secured their position in India by the sword, was 
to prevent their race, and with it the divine revelation of 
which they believed themselves to be the heirs, from being 
utterly submerged in the process of adaptation to their environ- 
ment, which was the inevitable consequence of a permanent 
occupation of the countr3^ This instinct of race preservation, 
together with a profound conviction of divine guidance, formed 
the basic principles of the code of laws and social customs 
which became a part of the sacred literature of Hinduism. 
The term Aryan, originall}^ a purely racial distinction con- 
fined to the ' five peoples,' or five principal Aryan tribes, 
came to mean all the people who were within the Aryan 
pale and conformed to Aryan laws and institutions. The 
five social grades, partly based upon race and partly upon 
occupation, were ^,the four recognised varnas, known as the 
' pure classes ' — the Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and 
Sudras — and a fifth which included the offspring of inter- 
marriages which were not recognised by Aryan law. The 
Brahmans formed the priestly class ; the Kshatriyas were the 
fighting men ; the Vaisyas the common people engaged in 
occupations connected with the necessaries of life ; and the 
Sudras the menial labourers, including the lower ranks of 
handicraftsmen and tillers of the soil. Outside the Aryan 
pale, and never admitted therein, were the wild aboriginal 
tribes inhabiting the dense forests, who then, as now, held 
themselves aloof from civilised hfe. 

The idea of purity which made the social distinctions amongst 
the Aryans themselves and between Aryans and non- Aryans 
was probably in its origin identical with the blood-bond of 
the Teutonic races. But with the gradual development of 
the Vedic theory of sacrifice it came to be interpreted in 
a spiritual rather than physical sense, and thus denoted 
the barrier which separated those who could participate 
in the benefits of Vedic ritual, either directly or by proxy, 
from the ' impure,' whose mere presence would entirely 
vitiate the efficacy of the sacrifice. 
i6 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

But the rigidity and exclusiveness of tiie caste system, as 
we now know it, were largely the product of medieval condi- 
tions and did not exist either in the time of the Buddha or 
for many centuries afterwards. Neither is it right to suppose 
that the rigour of caste was imposed upon India by the craft 
and subtlety of an unscrupulous priesthood only bent upon 
self-aggrandisement. It was rather an inevitable consequence 
of the peculiar conditions and circumstances which produced 
Aryan civilisation in India. If it be assumed that a certain 
race, few in numbers and surrounded by a vast population 
of aliens, had by profound insight or by divine revelation 
obtained a knowledge of the laws of life far above that of 
their fellow-men, it would obviously be for the advantage of 
the community at large that the purity of the race should 
be maintained by strict marriage laws and that the utmost 
care should be taken to hand down to posterity a tradition 
so pregnant with human happiness. The Aryans believed 
themselves to be in possession of this precious knowledge, 
and lest it should be perverted or made a weapon in 
the hands of unscrupulous adversaries, by common consent 
it was guarded as a national palladium and entrusted to the 
custody of a class specially selected and trained for the purpose. 
Caste laws were laws of spiritual eugenics, designed to promote 
the evolution of a higher race. It was also by a process of 
natural selection, or survival of the fittest, that the Brahmans, 
originally only attendants at the tribal sacrifices who chanted 
the accompanying hymns and had charge of the sacred vessels, 
gradually obtained precedence over the Kshatriyas, who in 
Vedic times combined priestly functions with their military 
profession and were the representatives of the purest Aryan 
stock. For in the state of constant warfare which existed so 
long as the Aryans and their non- Aryan allies were fighting 
for supremacy in India, social and racial prejudices would 
often be subordinated to considerations of national security, 
and the blood of the Kshatriya aristocracy would tend to 
become mixed by the admission into their ranks of non- Aryans 
and men of mixed race who distinguished themselves as leaders 

B 17 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

in war but were not competent to officiate in sacrificial 
rites. 

Tiie increasing complication of these rites and the supposed 
dangers to the Aryan community which might arise from errors 
in their performance also made it imperative that none but 
highly trained experts should be allowed to take part in them. 
And not only was the Brahman class by reason of its occupa- 
tion less liable to mixture with non-Aryan blood, but the 
intellectual training which alone entitled the Brahmans to 
their especial privileges was intended to qualify them as 
teachers and spiritual leaders of the people. The Brahman 
at birth stood on the level of common humanity, even as a 
Sudra. It was only at the ceremony of investiture with the 
sacred thread and initiation into the state of Brahmacharin 
or studentship, when his spiritual father, the Brahman guru, 
whispered in his ear the mystic formula, the Gayatri, which 
contained the essence of all the Vedas, that he was born to 
Brahmanhood and was entitled to the exceptional privileges 
of his class. "As an elephant made of wood, as an antelope 
made of leather, such is an unlearned Brahman : those three 
have nothing but names " {Manu, ii, 157). 

However extravagant the claims of the Brahmans may 
have become in later times, it must be admitted that the moral 
standard prescribed in the rules of their order was a very 
high one. " A Brahman should constantly shun worldly 
honour as he would shun poison ; and rather constantly seek 
disrespect as we would seek nectar " {Manu, ii, 162). He 
was required to live abstemiously, to shun sensual excesses of 
every kind, and to observe very strict rules of personal hygiene. 
As a student, or Brahmacharin, in the first quarter of his life 
he must learn to control his passions, to wait sedulously on 
his preceptor, or guru, and beg for his daily food. As a house- 
holder he must avoid all kinds of wealth that might impede 
his constant study of the Vedas, speak the truth without needless 
altercation, keep himself pure in mind and body, and live with 
the least possible injury to all animated beings {Manu, iv). 
In old age, provided that he had no relations dependent upon 
18 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

him, he should renounce the worldly life entirely and retire 
to a forest hermitage for meditation or become a wandering 
mendicant {sannydsin) . The Brahman who neglected the rules 
of his order or those who committed sin under the pretext of 
austere devotion were, among their own class, to be despised 
both in this life and the next {Manu, iv, 199). Those who 
took to occupations other than those permitted by the rules 
of their order lost their status as Brahmans and in the civil 
courts were to be treated as Sudras {Manu, viii, 102). But, 
lest such discriminations should lower the prestige of the 
whole order, justice was not permitted to go further than 
this, and Brahmans were to be honoured as such by the other 
classes even though they descended to mean occupations, and 
whether they were learned or ignorant {Manu, ix, 317-319). 

The marriage laws, the strict rules of seclusion, and the 
severe penalties for injuries caused to Brahmans by anyone 
of the lower orders were, in the social conditions which obtained 
in India, a necessary protection for those who were the especial 
custodians of the honour and traditions of the Aryan race, and 
who by the nature of their calling did not usually bear arms 
for self-defence. It must be observed, however, that the 
position given to Brahmans in the laws of Manu must not be 
taken to represent that which they held in primitive Indo- 
Aryan society, but rather that which they had earned for 
themselves in the early centuries of the Christian era, when 
this code was probably drawn up. Neither should it be 
supposed that the laws were always strictly observed : they 
represent rather a counsel of perfection given by Brahmans 
for the government of a model Indo-Aryan state. 

The Ramayana records the fact that some of the higher 
ranks of craftsmen had a social status equal to that of Brahmans. 
Included among them were those who were versed in the canons 
of craft ritual, the Silpa-Sdstras, such as the craftsmen who 
wrought the sacrificial posts at tribal religious ceremonies and 
the master-builders who laid out the plans of the village 
communities and designed public buildings and irrigation 
works. But it was only when a craftsman was regarded as 

19 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

officiating in sacred rites that he took the status of a Brahman 
and was entitled to the privileges of the highest class. " The 
hand of an artist employed in his art is always pure " {Manu, 
V, 129), but those who built houses for gain were to be avoided 
as offenders against Aryan law, contact with whom was pollu- 
tion [Manu, iii, 163). 

It has been assumed by Fergusson and other archaeological 
writers, on very insufficient grounds, that the Aryans when 
they entered India had not emerged from a primitive state of 
culture, that they were little skilled in handicraft, and that 
Indian architecture was largely a creation of the non-Aryan 
races with whom they came in contact. If, as is more than 
probable, some of the Aryan immigrants were an overflow from 
the great cities of Mesopotamia and Persia, there is no reason 
to suppose that they were unskilled in the arts of city life. 
The building craft has always been closely associated with the 
science of warfare, and the Aryan fighting clans would hardly 
have prevailed in the long struggle against the warlike non- 
Aryan races in India had they not been at least as well equipped 
in the means of offence and defence as their adversaries. 
Indeed every conquest of India has been a story of the superior 
technical equipment of the invading armies. 

The Kshatriyas, as well as the Vaisyas, were entitled to 
the sacred thread and were initiated at the proper age as 
members of the ' twice-born ' classes. Their special duties 
were the protection of the whole community and the admini- 
stration of justice, but they never renounced their claim to 
be considered, equally with Brahmans, the spiritual leaders 
of the people. As philosophers and poets they contributed a 
great deal to Aryan sacred literature, especially to the earliest. 
The Buddha was one of the great spiritual teachers who belonged 
to the Kshatriya class and represented its religious ideals. 
In warfare they were bound by rules of chivalry which always 
distinguish civilisation from barbarism. It was held unworthy 
of a Kshatriya to use arrows " mischievously barbed," or 
poisoned darts blazing with fire, or concealed weapons. They 
were forbidden to kill non-combatants, or an enemy when 
20 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

sleeping, grievously wounded, or disarmed ; or one who was 
naked, had broken weapons, or had lost his armour. As a 
king, or chief of his tribe, either by election or hereditary right, 
the duty of a Kshatriya was to consult his council of ministers 
in all matters of importance and to rule in strict accordance 
with Aryan common law. The rights of the people were to 
be respected to such an extent that even a conquered nation 
was to be ruled according to the laws declared in their books, 
and not after the caprice of the conqueror {Manu, vii, 203). 
Punishment for offences was to be awarded in an ascending 
scale according to the social rank of the criminal. Thus, 
according to the laws of Manu (viii, 336-338), the fine of a 
Sudra for theft was to be eightfold ; that of a Vaisya sixteen- 
fold ; that of a Kshatriya thirty -two-fold ; and that of a 
Brahman sixty-four-fold. And where a man of lower rank 
would be fined one pana a king was to be fined a thousand. 

The Vaisya class, which included agriculturists, traders, 
and handicraftsmen, was not bound by such strict rules of 
morality as the two upper classes, since trafficking and usury 
were satydnrita, or a mixture of truth and falsehood {Manu, 
iv, 6). Yet this ancient code of Aryan ethics declares that 
" of all pure things, purity in acquiring wealth is pronounced 
the most excellent ; since he who gains wealth with clean 
hands is truly pure, not he who is purified merely with earth 
and water" {Manu, v, 106). If this principle were accepted 
as the foundation of modern economic science we might 
find in it the key to the solution of many vital industrial 
problems. The position accorded to Vaisyas as one of the 
' twice-born ' classes seems to show that even in Vedic times 
the trading community was an influential one among the 
Aryans in India. There is evidence that commercial inter- 
course both by land and sea existed between the Aryan colonies 
in Northern India and the rich Dravidian kingdoms of the 
South from very early times. Aryan merchants doubtless 
also took part in the ancient trade between India and Egypt, 
Arabia, Mesopotamia, and the great cities of Western Asia. 
And no doubt it was owing to this constant intercourse with 

21 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

foreign peoples that Aryan blood in the Vaisya class, in spite 
of marriage laws, tended to become very mixed. 

The Sudras, the lowest of the four classes recognised as 
* pure,' or Aryan, occupied the position of serfs. They were 
not permitted to wear the sacred thread, the symbol of a 
second, or spiritual, birth, and their highest duty, sa5^s Manu, 
was the service of Brahmans, with the expectation that if 
faithfully performed it might win for them Brahmanhood in 
the next birth. They were never permitted to study the 
sacred scriptures or to perform the rites of the twice-born 
classes on the ground that they could not by reason of their 
calling attain to that degree of purity of mind and living 
which were essential for the right use of the power gained 
by divine knowledge. Yet, it was said, wisdom might be 
learnt even from a Sudra, just as gold might be extracted from 
impure substances or nectar from poison {Manu, ii, 238-239). 

Outside the four varnas, but yet admitted within the Aryan 
pale, was a fifth class called Sdmdnya, or Common, otherwise 
Sutas, which was formed by irregular intermarriages between 
the other classes or between Aryans and non-Aryans. This, 
the original basis of the caste system, was constantly being 
widened by the admission of non-Aryan people within the 
pale, who though adopting the principles of Arj^an law and 
religion, yet did not wholly abandon their own social customs 
and popular deities. 

The political organisation of the Aryan tribes was a demo- 
cracy based upon the organisation of the village community, 
a number of villages being generally federated for purposes 
of mutual protection under the rule of a raja, or king, some- 
times elected and sometimes hereditary, who though vested 
with supreme authority was subject to Aryan common law 
and tradition. The planning of the village and the religious 
symbolism connected with it are recorded in the Silpa-Sastras, 
and were reproduced in the enclosure of the Hindu temple 
of medieval and modern times. The typical form, probably 
derived from the fortified camp of the first Aryan invaders, 
was a rectangular enclosure with the four sides facing the 
22 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

four quarters, and divided into four wards by the two main 
streets which crossed each other in the centre and were termi- 
nated at each end by the four principal gates. There were 
four subsidiary gates near the corners of the village enclosure, 
so that the whole circumference of the walls or palisade was 
divided into eight — ' the Eightfold Path.' The longest of the 
two main streets, which ran east and west, was known as the 
King's Street — Rdjapatha ; the shorter one was called Mahd- 
kala or Vamana, signifying Broad Street or Short Street. 
These two streets, wider than the rest and planted with trees, 
were the two main lines of communication linking village 
with village and forming the highways of commerce. They 
were military and commercial routes maintained either at the 
charge of the king's treasury or by the co-operation of groups 
of villages and at their joint expense. The centre of the 
village, at the intersection of the crossways, was the meeting- 
place of the elders, and there, on a mound faced with stone 
or brick which served as a platform, grew the Council Tree — 
the Bodhi Tree or Tree of Wisdom — under the shade of which 
the affairs of the village were discussed. In the larger villages 
a more substantial Council House might be found in the form 
of a pillared pavilion built of wood, brick, or stone, attached 
to the shrine of the patron deity of the community, which was 
open on all four sides to symbolise his guardianship of the 
four quarters. This was the position assigned in the vSilpa- 
Sastras to the temple of Brahma as Creator and Protector of 
the Universe. To express his attributes of world-dominion 
and his guardianship of the crossways he was popularly repre- 
sented as having four heads, though Aryan religious teachers 
discountenanced the ritualistic use of images. 

Just as the aim of Vedic philosophy was to discover the 
secret laws of the universe and to found thereon a religion of 
everyday life, so the Indo-Aryan village was conceived as a 
microcosm, the * five peoples ' of the Aryan community repre- 
senting the five elements of the universe and each quarter of 
the village symbolising a corresponding division of the macro- 
cosm. The public celebration of the sacrificial rites to the 

23 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

deities {devas) who presided over the different quarters of the 
universe had its appointed place in the quarters of the village 
dedicated to these deities, and thus each temple had its appro- 
priate site fixed according to the aspect of the divine power 
which was to be worshipped. The houses of the villagers — 
which were the family property of the freemen, but could not 
be alienated without the consent of the community — the 
''_£ublic bathing-places, parks or sacred groves, and public 
orchards were grouped round these fixed points in various 
ways, according to the nature of the site and the social rank 
of the owners. The bazars occupied the blocks adjoining the 
village enclosure, close to the main gates. 

A wide path which intervened between the outer blocks and 
the boundary walls, or fences, was known as the Mangala- 
vlthi, the path of Blessing or Auspiciousness, as it was the path 
by which the Kshatriya or Brahman householders circumambu- 
lated the village in the immemorial rite of Pradakshind, reciting 
mantrams to invoke the favours of the gods and to keep oft' 
evil spirits. This path was dedicated to the War-god, Kartti- 
keya, one of whose epithets is Mangala, on account of its use 
in the military defence of the village. 

A broad belt of land surrounding the village boundaries was 
communal property cultivated by the villagers and the common 
pasture-ground of their cattle, which were strictly guarded 
from wild beasts and hostile raiders by the herdsmen and the 
sentinels posted on the high towers or palisades over the 
village gateways. Hence the latter were known as gopurams, 
or * cattle-forts,' a name afterwards applied to the entrance 
gateways of Hindu temple enclosures which repeated the 
symbolism of the village plan. A general assembly of the 
freemen met every year to elect the village council, consisting of 
five members, who were presumed to represent the five social 
elements of the community, and to administer the affairs of 
the village according to Aryan law and custom. The elective 
principle, however, though nominally it applied even to the 
appointment of kings, was often superseded by the recognition 
of a hereditary right of office, vested in certain families, and 

24 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

only forfeited by some grave offence or neglect of duty. In 
this case the general assembly of freemen tended to become 
a consultative rather than an elective body, though its influence 
was generally strong enough to maintain popular rights, even 
in later times under the highly centralised government of 
the Maury an and other imperial dynasties. 

The sites of villages were carefully chosen according to 
principles, ritualistic and sanitary, observed in the traditions 
of the Indo-Aryan master-builder. They were generally on 
the bank of a river, by the seashore or the side of a lake, so 
that ample bathing facilities were easily accessible. Bathing 
was regarded as a religious rite in itself, and a necessary pre- 
liminary for sacrificial rites ; the Devas, ' the Shining Ones,' 
who were the guardian spirits of the Aryan people, loved the 
places which by nature or artifice were provided with water 
and pleasant gardens. The soil of the proposed site was 
examined to ascertain whether it was fit for cultivation and 
whether good drinking water was procurable sufficiently near 
the surface. When the site was determined and the blessing 
of the gods had been invoked in the presence of the assembled 
people, the ground was ploughed over. A new plough specially 
made for the occasion was yoked to a pair of oxen, strong 
and without blemish, with gold or silver rings on their horns 
and hoofs, and the master-builder who directed the ceremonies 
turned the first furrow. The oxen and plough were after- 
wards presented to him as his perquisite, the people doing 
him reverence as their guru. Then various kinds of sacrificial 
grain were sown in the soil, and when the crops had grown 
and come into flower the cattle of the community were turned 
out to graze upon them. The site was then ready for the 
building operations. The master-builder oriented the village 
boundaries by means of the shadow of a gnomon, flxed the 
position of the gateways, and laid out the two main streets in 
the form of the cosmic cross. Then, squaring out the whole 
area into the mystic figure called Paramdsdyika} he determined 

1 The close connection of this geometrical system with Vedic sacrificial 
lore and the position of the master-builder as a high priest, or sacrificial 

25 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the auspicious sites for shrines, orchards, reservoirs, wells, 
and blocks of houses, and the lay-out of the streets according 
to the special needs of various social grades and the nature 
of the ground. 

The Silpa-Sastras give many different types of village plans, 
such as a village adapted for a community v/hich was exclu- 
sively Brahman, one which contained all five classes, and 
others based upon the swastika and other symbolic figures. 
For the purpose of co-operation and for mutual defence villages 
combined in groups of ten, twenty, a hundred, and a thousand 
or more, each group clustering round a fort or stronghold under 
the command of a tribal chieftain who owed allegiance to 
the overlord of the next largest group. In return for the 
protection thus afforded, every village, through its headman, 
paid a certain vali or tax into its chieftain's treasury, or in 
lieu of this furnished him with a certain number of fighting 
men, or with cattle or produce. The chieftain in his turn 
had to pass on a similar proportion of his revenue to the head 
of the group above him, who in the same way contributed to 
the treasury of his overlord. The principle of combination 
and co-operation was applied also to the upkeep of roads, 
the construction of irrigation works, travellers' rest-houses, 
public assembly halls, and the laying out of public parks, as 
well as to agricultural work, trade, and handicraft. 

It is usual to consider early Aryan religion as founded upon 
the compilation of sacred hymns, ritualistic practices, and 
philosophic ideas contained in the Vedas, but unless one 
endeavours to relate these fragmentary records of Arj-an 
poetry and religion to their natural context in Aryan daily life 

expert, are indirect proofs of the great antiquity of the Indian science of 
town-planning, for geometry as a science was an Indo-Aryan invention 
and had its origin in the complicated system of Vedic sacrifices in which 
it became necessary to resolve geometrical problems such as constructing a 
circle equal in area to a square, or vice versa. The lay-out of the Indo- 
Aryan village is treated in the Silpa-Sastras as the preparation of sacrificial 
ground. I have therefore considered it justifiable to refer it historically to 
the Vedic period and to connect it with the camp or fortified settlement of 
the early Aryan invaders. There are distinct references to it in the Buddha's 
teaching, as will be seen further on. 
26 



N U 

rii ^^H 



/^ 



PATH OF AUSPICIOUSNESS 



"^^ 



Wi 



iTemple K 1 N G' S STREET 



n~inc 
D 



D 



C^"^ PATH OF AU 



SPICIOUSNESS 



^/ 




B 



2. Indo- Aryan Vn;r,AGE Pi,ans 



26 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

it is difficult, if not impossible, to view them in right perspec- 
tive. It can hardly be doubted that the three aspects of 
modern Hindu worship — that of the Ishta-devata, or the 
divinity of the self, the Grihya-devata, or the divinity of the 
household, and the Gramya-devata, the divinity of the village 
community — correspond to the ancient tradition of Vedic 
sacrifices, in which the head of the Aryan household had a 
threefold religious duty to perform — towards his god, his 
family, and his tribe. The Sandhyd, or daily ritual of the 
Brahman, performed at sunrise, noon, and sunset, also belongs 
to the immemorial traditions of Aryan religion, in which the 
sun was worshipped as the symbol of the Unknown Power in 
the universe, governing all other natural powers. This tradi- 
tion, as we have seen, grew up with the organisation of the 
Aryan village, in which the Mangalavithi, or path surrounding 
the village, was consecrated for the performance of the rite 
of Pradakshind, symbolising the path of the sun across the 
heavens or the turning of the wheel of life and death. 

The Kautiliya-artha-S dsfra, one of the oldest codes of Hindu 
polity and sociology, gives the names of the four principal 
gates of the Aryan town or village. The eastern gate, the 
starting-point of the circumambulatory rite, was dedicated 
to Brahma, the Creator, represented by the rising sun. The 
southern gate, which symbolised the sun at noon, was dedi- 
cated to Indra, the Vedic god who ruled the firmament of the 
day. The western gate was dedicated to the setting sun, or 
to Yama, the Ivord of Death, and the northern gate to Senapati, 
or Karttikeya,^ the War-god. The Upanishads shaped this 
primitive nature symbolism into definite philosophic concepts, 
and Vishnu-Surya, ' the All-Pervading,' then took the place 
of Indra at the zenith, Siva appropriated the attributes of 
Yama and his position in the western sky, while the concept 
of the cosmic Slumber, under the name of Vishnu-Narayana, 
took the place of the War-god at the nadir. 

^ Kai-ttikeya was the War-lord as the offspring of Siva, the Destroyer, 
He presided over the lunar mansions on account of his association with the 
sunset. 

27 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

It was upon this ancient symbolic rite of the Indo-Aryan 
village — the rite of the Cosmic Cross or the Wheel of lyife — 
that the Buddha based his doctrine of the Aryan Eightfold 
Path — ^the new Way of Life which woiild release mankind from 
suffering ; for, as we have seen, there were usually eight gates 
in the village walls, one in the centre of each side, and one 
smaller one at each corner. 

The early Vedic symbols of natural powers — Surya, the 
Sun ; Agni, the Fire-spirit ; Indra, the Wielder of the Thunder- 
bolt, the Rain-producer, and the power which ruled the heavenly 
dome by day ; and Varuna, the Concealer, the ruler of the night 
sky — mostly belonged to the remote period of Aryan religion, 
before the race appeared on Indian soil and before the philo- 
sophic concepts of the Upanishads had been formulated. 
Vishnu and Siva, in their early materialistic conception, were 
both mountain deities, and seem to have come into Indo- 
Aryan cosmogony when the Aryans had their home in the 
Himalayan regions and when all the phenomena of tropical 
nature had begun to shape their ideas. Vishnu, the fertile 
mountain, gay with flowers and trees, upon which an Aryan 
tribe would often build their chieftain's fort, was always 
identified with the interests of the Kshatriyas and regarded 
as their patron deity. Later he became the all-pervading 
Spirit of lyife, moving spirally, like a serpent, around the 
vertical arm of the cosmic cross, or the line joining the zenith 
and nadir. Then his mountain was considered as the pivot 
or axis of the cosmic forces, and his mystic tree which grew 
thereon had the blue sky for its foliage and the sun and moon 
and stars for fruits. In the night Vishnu (Narayana) slept 
upon the cosmic waters guarded by the serpent of Eternity, 
Sesha or Ananta (the Milky Way), and awoke at dawn to meet 
his bride, Eakshmi, the bright goddess of the day, who brought 
prosperity to mankind. 

Siva, the Spirit of Death, the guardian of the western gate 
of the village, or the gate of the setting sun, took concrete 
form in the snow-clad mountain upon whose summit nature 
seems to retire within herself, as if wrapt in meditation. But 
28 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

just as the Himalayan mountain glacier is the fountain from 
which pour the life-giving waters of the five rivers of the 
Aryan holy land, so Siva as well as Vishnu had a dual aspect. 
He was lord both of life and of death. Parvati, or Uma, the 
fair daughter of Himalaya, and the symbol of spring, once a 
year lured Siva from his profound meditation, caused his 
snow-white mantle to melt partially away, and decked the 
mountain slopes with bridal garlands. Siva was the horizontal 
arm of the cosmic cross containing the sunrise and the sunset. 
He was Creator and Destroyer. The circle which contained 
both ends of the cross was the wheel of life and the serpent of 
reincarnation. 

Oriental scholars have long sought to discover by way of 
philological research at what period of Indian history the two 
great schools of modern Hinduism, the Saiva and Vaishnava, 
had their starting-point, and, taking their stand upon philo- 
logical data only, have drawn a hard-and-fast distinction 
between the Hindu and Vedic religion because the names of 
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva do not come into prominence until 
a late period of Sanskrit literature. But philology taken by 
itself cannot show the relationship between the word and 
the idea or give the symbol representing a religious concept 
its proper place in the daily life of a people. Names are 
constantly changing with the development of old ideas, though 
all the powers of nature which suggest those ideas to the 
human mind remain unchanged. 

The tangle of terminology in which, to the Western mind, 
Indian religious thought is involved may be unravelled by the 
study of the symbolism contained in its ritual, which has 
remained fixed in its association with the cosmic forces 
worshipped by the ancient Aryans in spite of all terminological 
changes. The symbol of the cosmic cross, the wheel of life, or 
four-petalled lotus-flower shown overleaf, which is embodied 
in the plan of the Indo-Aryan village and temple, contains 
the four fundamental concepts upon which all Hindu religious 
cults have been built from the remotest Vedic period down 
to the present day, whether they represented the earliest 

29 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Aryan nature-worship or the esoteric philosophy which grew 
out of it. And just as Birth and Death, lyife and Eternity, 
symbohsed by sunrise and sunset, noon and midnight, are 
always immutable factors in the history of human thought, 
so the historian may disregard the time when a particular 

(NORTH) 

ETERNITY 

NARAYANA 

f VARUNA 
\SOMA<S-<;. 



(WEST) 

DEATH 

SIVA 

( RUDRA 
I YAMA &-C. 



5AIVA 



(O 


"^■^^ 


-1 


"Vv 


o 


N. 


o 


^\ 


X 


\ 


u 


\ 


to 


\ 




SCHOOLS i 


<: 




3 




< 


/ 


zz 


/ 


X 


/ 


<o 


/ 


^•^ 


^'^ 


^_ 


• 



(EAST) 

BIRTH 

BRAHMA 

USHAS ] 

lakshmi i 
parvatI 1 

&-C. ) 



(SOUTH) 

LIFE 

VISHNU 

fSURYA 
\lNDRA &<:. 

vSanskrit name was attached to them in successive periods 
if he gives to each its proper place in the symbolic plan 
upon which all Indian philosophical concepts were based. 
It will then become clear that there must always have been 
Saiva and Vaishnava distinctions in Indo-Aryan religious 
thought, whatever names may have been given to them, just 
as there are optimists and pessimists in all ages and alwa3^s a 
conflict in human nature between the will to live and the 
higher spiritual instinct. 

30 



ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS 

Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva may be regarded as collective 
names standing for all the symbols which Indo-Aryan religion 
associated with Birth, Life, and Death in the abstract. Ndrd- 
yana may be taken as a collective name for all the symbols of 
the future life and eternity ; and as the jBirst three ultimately 
merge into eternity, so according to Vedantic teaching they 
represent the Three Aspects of the One Eternal. 

It was not without reason that the Vedas were held to contain 
the whole essence of Aryan religion, even after the names of 
the older Vedic deities fell into disuse ; for though the concepts 
of Vedic philosophy were expanded b^^ the later schools, and 
though new names were given to the old symbols as they came 
to bear a deeper and wider significance, the root-ideas are 
to be found in the Upanishads and the Vedic religion was the 
moving spirit of the organisation of the Aryan village com- 
munities, which, in the words of vSir Charles Metcalfe, " contri- 
buted more than any other cause to the preservation of the 
people of India through all the revolutions and changes they 
have suffered, and is in a high degree conducive to their happi- 
ness and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and 
independence." ^ 

To the philosopher Vishnu and Siva were concepts repre- 
senting two different logical processes, the inductive and 
deductive, and two different schools of thought. The former 
was a scientific school which took its stand upon smriti — 
reasoned knowledge and the law of cause and effect based 
upon the facts of human experience ; the latter depended upon 
insight or inspiration, known as sruti, or divine revelation, 
of which the Vedas were said to be the highest expression. 
The Kshatriya thinkers were men of action who generally 
adhered to the Vaishnava school of thought, while the Brahman 
philosophers mostly belonged to the Saiva school. It is hardly 
necessary to say that there was always a wide gulf between 
popular notions of religion and the profound speculations of 
the Aryan philosopher. 

1 Report of Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1832. See 
Elphinstone's History of India, Book IIj chap. ii. 

31 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Vishnu, popularly, was a deified hero, a great Kshatriya 
teacher, reincarnated from time to time to instruct the Aryan 
race and lead them to victory ; Siva was an ascetic whose 
hermitage was fixed in some mountain cavern amidst Hima- 
layan ice and snow, where through the third eye of spiritual 
insight all the secrets of the universe were made known to 
him. 

Great as the achievements of the Aryan philosopher un- 
doubtedly were in the field of abstract thought, they were 
not more remarkable than the success of a small colony of 
people, vastly outnumbered by the congeries of different races 
which India has probably always contained, in welding together 
these heterogeneous elements intellectually, socially, and 
politically in the organisation of the village communities ; 
so that though each political, social, and racial unit retained 
its own individuality, India became a synthesis of people 
with common traditions of polity and religion living together 
within the Aryan pale. The result was not less remarkable 
because several of the non-Ar^^an elements, especially the 
Dravidian, made great intellectual contributions to the common 
fund, and because the Aryan racial type never became very 
widely distributed over the whole of India. Ethnographic 
investigations show that the Indo-Aryan type described in 
the Hindu epics — a tall, fair-complexioned, long-headed race, 
with narrow, prominent noses, broad shoulders, long arms, 
slim waists " like a lion," and thin legs like a deer — ^is now 
(as it was in the earliest times) mostly confined to Kashmir, 
the Panjab and Rajputana, and represented by the Khattris, 
Jats, and Rajputs. 



32 



CHAPTER II 

THE EPIC AGE 

THERE is no record of any striking event like the landing 
of Hengist and Horsa at Ebbsfleet, from wMch we 
can date the beginning 'of Indian history. All that 
can be gathered from philological evidence is that at some 
remote period, reckoned from between 3000 and 1000 B.C. 
or earlier, a number of Aryan tribes whose poets sang the 
sacrificial hymns of the Rig-Veda, dedicated to the powers 
of nature — ^the Sun, the Sky, the Rain-spirit, the Storm-wind, 
Soma the Moon, the Fire-spirit — and to the Unknown God 
who created all things, had estabUshed themselves in North- 
western India, in the districts now contained by the Panjab 
and Eastern Afghanistan, which they called Brahmavarta, 
the Holy I^and or I^and of Prayer. They were divided into 
clans, of which the Kshatriyas formed the aristocracy and 
priesthood, the Brahmans being as yet merely assistants at 
the tribal sacrifices. The lower orders, which, though more 
or less mixed in race, were classed as Aryans, were engaged 
in trade and agriculture. The organisation of the village 
communities was already essentially complete. Each village 
managed its own affairs through its council of elders, and the 
assembly of the whole people elected its war-lord to lead 
the tribe, or federation of tribes. Wars between the different 
Aryan tribes as well as struggles with the non-Aryan ' bar- 
barians,' the Dasyus or Dasas, were frequent, but as in the 
former case it was a fixed principle that war should not be 
made merely for acquisition of territory, and that a conquered 
Aryan king should not be deposed but should become the 
tributary of his conqueror, tribal quarrels probably did not 
greatly disturb Aryan social order : these inter-tribal wars 

c 33 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

were more of the nature of gladiatorial combats in which the 
Kshatriya warriors exhibited their prowess. The chieftain 
who had been the raja of five hundred villages might by his 
victory become the maharaja of a thousand, and as such 
exact tribute from the raja of the conquered group, but no 
war-lord, however great, was above the common law of 
the Aryan people, or could presume to curtail the liberties of 
their freemen. " Never shall an Arya be subjected to slavery ' ' ^ 
was the charter of the race even under the rule of the Mauryan 
emperors. 

This epoch of unknown antiquity in which the Vedic Aryans, 
who called themselves the Panch-janah or ' the Five Peoples,' ^ 
lived in the land of the Five Rivers, and had for their sacred 
lore the Vedic hymns and ritual, and the philosophy of the 
Upanishads, was followed by another one which may be 
described as the Epic Age, since it was the period in which 
the events recorded in the Mahdhhdrata and Rdmdyana 
occurred, namely the Great War and the invasion of Southern 
India by the Aryans. At the beginning of this epoch, or 
somewhere between the first and second millenniums before 
Christ, the Aryans had spread themselves over the Madhya- 
desa, or ' Middle Country,' corresponding approximately to the 
modern United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and were pushing 
themselves further east along the valley of the Ganges into 
Vanga, or Bengal. Though Aryan culture afterwards diffused 
itself over the whole of Southern India, the Vindhya Mountains, 
which separate Northern India from the Dekhan, remained the 
southern boundary of the land known as Aryavarta, or the 
land of the Aryans, held to be crescent-shaped, like the moon 
on Siva's brow. Hence Aryavarta was also known as the 
I^and of the Moon (Indu), and every bend of a river or crescent- 
shaped hill-scarp, bathed by a mountain torrent, was a symbol 
of this holy land — a place propitious for the Vedic sacrifice and 
fit for meditation or the hermit's cell. 

1 Kautillya-artha-Sastra, Book III, chap. xiii. 

* The name referred either to five prmcipal tribes, or perhaps to the five 
classes of Aryans. 



THE EPIC AGE 

The principal political development of this epoch was the 
gradual consolidation of the small tribal confederations which 
characterised the Vedic period into considerable states ruled 
by hereditary dynasties. The explanation of the origin of 
kingship given in the Mahabharata is the state of anarchy into 
which Aryavarta had fallen owing to the absence of a strong 
ruling hand to enforce social laws, and to the neglect of Aryan 
tradition, which no doubt followed the frequent admission 
of aliens to the privileges of freemen, as the Aryans gradually 
spread themselves further over the country. But in Aryan 
polity the divine right of kings was never recognised as a 
personal attribute of the monarch, belonging to himself and 
his family. He had no right except that which was conferred 
upon him by Aryan law, and he could be fined or deposed by 
the General Assembly of the freemen, or by the Council of 
Ministers, if he neglected his duties as king or offended against 
that law. The hereditary principle was recognised as a safe- 
guard for the maintenance of Aryan tradition, the king's 
family being regarded as the one amongst the others of the 
ruling class which should be most expert in the duties of 
kingship. Theoretically the king should be chosen from the 
Kshatriya class, as being that which by birth and training was 
best prepared for the responsibilities of royalty ; but the 
rule was by no means a fixed one, and even a Sudra might in 
time of war win his way to the throne by virtue of his military 
prowess. The king's chief duty was the protection of the 
State. He should " first subdue himself and then seek to 
subdue his foes. How should a king who has not been able 
to conquer his own self be able to conquer his foes ? " ^ "In 
the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness : in their 
welfare his welfare : whatever pleases himself he should not 
consider as good." ^ In his coronation oath, which he was 
to take "mentally, physically, and verbally," he swore to see 
to the advantage of the State, " considering always as Cod 
whatever is law and whatever is in accordance with ethics and 

^ Mahabharata, Raja dharmdnu gdsana Parva, Sect. I/XIX, 4. 
* Kautiltya-ariha-Sdstra, " The Duties of a King," chap, xix. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

whatever is not opposed to policy. I will act according to 
that and will never act arbitrarily." ^ 

The so-called modern ideal of kingship is, in fact, as old 
as Indian civilisation. According to Aryan law the king held 
the same position in the macrocosm of the State as the grdmani 
or headman of the village community did in his smaller sphere. 
He was bound to consult his ministers, who, like the elders 
of the village, were representative of all the five classes of 
freemen, and were selected for their knowledge of Aryan tradi- 
tion to advise the king in all important affairs of State, and to 
assist him in the administration of Aryan law. 

There is no detailed account of the exact constitution of 
the king's council given in the epics, ^ but in the fully organised 
Aryan state described in the oldest Aryan law-books the 
ministers were generally ten in number — or eleven including 
the crown prince. The first minister of the Crown was the 
royal PuroMta or chaplain, whose qualifications were to be 
equal to his high position. He was the king's chief spiritual 
adviser, and should be competent " both to curse and bless." 
Besides being learned in the Vedas and versed in Mantras and 
sacred rites, a man of great strength of character and strict 
morals, so that even the king should fear his anger and listen 
to his correction, he was to be thoroughly versed in politics 
and diplomacy, should know the science of archery in all its 
branches, and be a master of military arms and tactics. The 
Pratinidhi, ' the Deputy ' or viceroy, who came next in rank 
and emoluments, was a kind of privy councillor who, if the 
king failed to listen to good advice, should " go on explaining. "^ 
The Pradhdna was the president of the council, who apportioned 
to each member his special share of work. Next came the 
Sachiva, or War Minister, the Mantri, or Foreign Minister, the 
Pfddvivdka, or Chief Justice, the Pandit, the Sumantra, or 
Finance Minister, the Amdtya, or Home Minister, and lastly, 

1 Mahabharata, Santi Parva. 

* In the Ramayana there were eight councillors — two Brahman spiritual 
advisers and an executive council of six. 

3 Sukra-nitisdra, translated by Benoy Kumar Sarkar, M.A., chap, ii, p. 
178. 

36 



THE EPIC AGE 

the head of the poHce — ^the chief spy, who also fulfilled the 
functions of an ambassador. 

Such a highly organised form of administration did not 
apparently exist in the times of the epics, but the principles 
of polity which underlie it belong to the earliest traditions of 
Aryan statecraft. The rights of the Aryan freemen were 
always to be respected. The people, says Manu, are to be 
protected from official underlings, who " are generally knaves, 
and seize what belongs to other men " (vii, 123), and even in 
conquered states the king should not interfere with popular 
customs — ^the laws declared in their books were to be 
established [Manu, vii, 203). 

These are the theories of kingship laid down in the ancient 
Hindu law-books. We may safely assume that theories did 
not always coincide with practice, since human nature has 
its failings in the East as in the West, and though these might 
have been the principles usually accepted as Aryan by the 
people of that race, there must have been times when the 
stern necessities of war enforced the suspension of the ordinary 
law and gave the king the powers of a dictator. But it must 
not be supposed that the authority of the king and his ministers 
entirely superseded that of the local assemblies and village 
councils. This was not the case even in medieval times, 
when the royal edicts continued to mention these democratic 
institutions in terms of great deference. A distinction was 
always drawn between imperial and local concerns. The 
officers and servants of the king were to live outside the villages, 
and no soldier of the king was to enter a village except on 
royal business ; neither were villagers to have dealings with 
the military [Sukrd-nitisdra, v, 180-182). 

The principal kingdoms mentioned in the Mahabharata and 
Ramayana were that of the Panchalas, lying between the 
Ganges and the Jumna, with Mathura, near the modern Agra, 
and Kanyakubja (Kanauj) as its two chief cities ; Kosala, 
which had its capital at Ajodhya, near Faizabad ; the smaller 
kingdoms of Videha and Magadha — the capital of the latter 
being Rajagriha — comprised in the present districts of North 

37 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and South Bihar ; and the kingdom of Kasi, the modern 
Benares. Besides these kingdoms there were numerous con- 
federations of tribes in which regal authority was exercised 
not by a single ruler but by a council of noble families, and 
other states whose political organisation was purely repub- 
lican, the General Assembly and its executive committees 
controlling all the affairs of the community. But whether the 
central authority was monarchical, an oligarchy, or republican, 
the village was the political unit of the State, and the rights 
of the soil were vested in the family of the freeman who cut 
away the wood or who cleared and tilled it, the State receiving 
its taxes as remuneration for the protection it afforded him, 
but the freeman remaining owner of the land, as he continued 
to be in Rajputana down to modern times. ^ 

A natural consequence of the consolidation of the Aryan 
tribal system into these larger states and kingdoms was the 
gradual development of the village settlements into large 
towns and cities planned on the same principles in which the 
different wards, or village units, were grouped round the 
royal palace and citadel. The royal capitals became industrial 
and trading centres, the duties imposed upon merchandise 
forming part of the State revenue. The Indus and other great 
waterways upon which the early Aryan settlements were 
placed were important trade routes linking together the 
military roads maintained by the State, along which passed 
the caravans laden with gold, precious stones, and spices from 
Southern India which added to the magnificence and luxury 
of the royal courts of Aryavarta as well as those of Western 
Asia and Europe. And as the Brahmans gradually became 
the custodians of Aryan traditions and culture, the asram, 
or Brahman village, developed into the university town to 
which Aryan youth of the twice-born classes went for instruc- 
tion. But while the seaports, the halting-places for caravans, 
and the centralisation of government, all tended to promote the 
growth of city life, it always remained a characteristic of 
Aryan culture that the greatness of the city — which was the 

^ Tod, Annals of Rajast'han, p. 492. 

38 



THE EPIC AGE 

product of the vitality of the village — and its political influence 
never restricted the independence of the latter or narrowed its 
outlook upon life. 

The increasing influence of the Brahman aristocracy began 
to have very important consequences, both politically and 
socially. For not only did the Brahmans, as experts in sacri- 
ficial lore, obtain the respect due to religious teachers, but 
they also challenged the supremacy of the Kshatriyas, the 
political and military leaders, on the ground that the strict 
discipline of mind and body which was a fundamental principle 
of Aryan philosophy was as indispensable for success in war 
and poHtics as it was for the spiritual development of those 
who sought divine truth. The Brahman university became 
a school of arms and military tactics, diplomacy and political 
science ; and just as Drona in the Mahabharata was the 
Brahman instructor of the Pandava heroes in the use of the 
bow and other weapons of war, so the Brahman diplomatist 
and politician became the chief among the ministers who 
formed the royal council. 

It must be admitted that, theoretically at least, there was 
much force in the Brahman contention. The attempt to enforce 
ethical considerations in the conduct of State policy, which 
was the justification of the position of the Purohita at the 
right hand of the War-lord, was the ground upon which the 
Christian Church in Europe asserted its claim for temporal 
power and privileges. In both cases the success or failure 
of the attempt depended almost as much upon the conscience 
of the people as upon the integrity and sincerity of their rulers. 
The Brahmans, however, as a class, never claimed for themselves 
the prerogatives of the kingly office, but only special rights 
as the king's philosopher and friend. The laws of Manu, a 
code drawn up by and for the Brahmans, distinctly reserves 
for Kshatriyas the power and position of sovereignty as defined 
by Aryan tradition. Nevertheless the feeling of rivalry be- 
tween the two sections of Aryan aristocracy became stronger 
and stronger as their respective social positions and spheres of 
influence became more clearly defined. The Kshatriyas were 

39 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

as little disposed to submit to any curtailment of their political 
and social privileges as they were to accept without reserve 
Brahman leadership in philosophy and religion, and the schism 
between Brahmanism and Buddhism can be traced to its 
starting-point in the divergent intellectual outlook which 
characterised the two schools of Aryan thinkers, Brahman and 
Kshatriya. The former was conservative and took its stand 
upon the Vedas as a divine revelation of which the Brahmans 
were the sole interpreters ; the latter, more concerned with 
the problems of social life and with the necessity of maintaining 
harmony within the Aryan pale by a recognition of non- 
Aryan ideas and customs, was broader in its views and always 
sought to add to the store of Vedic wisdom by independent 
research. 

The main plot of the Mahabharata relates to the Great War, 
in which many of the Aryan clans in Madhyadesa were the 
combatants ; but the epic has also an ethical note as the 
story of the triumph of Pandava chivalry and religious prin- 
ciple over the craft and unscrupulousness of the Kauravas. 
The leaders on the one side were five Kshatriya brothers, 
Yudhisthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva, the sons 
of King Pandu, and on the other their ten cousins, the Kauravas, 
sons of King Pandu's brother Dhritarashtra, who was the chief 
of the Bharata tribes at Hashtinapur. The Pandavas, together 
with their common wife, Draupadi, were tricked into a peni- 
tential exile by the cunning of the Kauravas, who hoped 
thereby to supplant them in their royal rights. But with the 
powerful aid of the Kshatriya hero Krishna, represented as an 
inspired teacher and an incarnation of Vishnu, the Pandavas 
placed themselves at the head of another confederation of 
tribes and exterminated the Kauravas in a great battle on the 
field of Kurukshetra, near the modern Delhi. Yudliisthira, 
the eldest of the Pandavas, was then crowned as the hereditary 
ruler of a great confederation, having its capital at Indraprastha, 
in which the vanquished allies of the Kauravas were included. 
The story of the Great War illustrates the process by which the 
Aryan and non-Aryan tribes were gradually consolidated into 
40 



THE EPIC AGE 

kingdoms under a powerful central government. The sum- 
mary of the philosophy of the Upanishads, given as a divine 
revelation by the guru of the Pandavas, Krishna, forms a 
religious nucleus interpreting the spiritual meaning of the 
fateful struggle, and numerous legends with a moral or 
religious purpose and monologues expounding the principles 
of Aryan polity are interwoven with the main plot of the 
epic. 

The significance of the distinction between the Ramayana 
and the Mahabharata, that the former records the history 
of the Surya-vamsa, the race of Stirya, and the latter that of 
the Chandra-vamsa, the race of Chandra, is worth considera- 
tion. The conventional view is that of Indian court poets 
and astrologers, that Rama had an imaginary pedigree going 
back to the Sun-god, Surya, and that the Pandavas and 
Kauravas were reputed to be descendants of Chandra, the 
Moon. There may be real history behind this poetic fancy 
if the symbolism is rightly understood. The expression 
Surya-putra, 'the son of Surya,' or Chandra-putra, 'the son 
of Chandra,' when applied to human beings, refers to their 
spiritual and not their earthly father, or, in other words, to 
their patron deity, or Ishta-devata ; just as the Gangd-putras — 
an inferior class of Brahmans who now attend to the wants 
of pilgrims at Benares — are not sons of Ganga in the literal 
sense, but her servants or devotees. 

The Surya-vamsa, Rama's family, were worshippers of 
Surya, while the Pandavas and Kauravas were worshippers 
of Chandra. Surya was the chief deity of the Aryans in Baby- 
lonia in the second millennium before Christ,^ so we may 
assume that the Aryan king of the Mitanni, Dushratta, who 
ruled in Babylon at that time, was one of the Surya-vamsa. 
It is not therefore surprising to find it recorded in the Rama- 
yana that Dasharatha, of the royal house of Ajodhya, also 
had Surya as his Ishta-devata. Vishnu-Surya was the patron 
deity of the Kshatriyas, while Chandra- or Soma-worship 
was a Brahmanical cult closely connected with that of Siva. 
^ Hall's Ancient History of the Near East, p. 201. 

41 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

The distinction between the Surya-vamsa and Chandra-vamsa 
of the Ramayana and Mahabharata was therefore analogous 
to that which divides the two main groups of Hinduism, the 
Vaishnava and Saiva, in the present day. 

It is not without significance that in the Mahabharata, Siva 
is put forward as the divine story-teller who records the history 
of the Pandavas and Kauravas. The fact that Krishna, the 
incarnation of Vishnu, is made their guru, or spiritual teacher, 
suggests an attempt on the part of the pandits of a Vaishnava 
court to unite the Surya-vamsa and Chandra-vamsa in a new 
school representing a later development of Kshatriya doctrine ; 
for the two schools were alwaj^s intermingling and constantly 
borrowing from each other. 

The Ramayana is probably older than the Mahabharata 
as an epic, but the events recorded in it may have followed 
those of the Great War. It is the first literary record of the 
passing of the Aryans beyond the Vindhya Mountains, the 
southern boundary of Aryavarta, and their penetration by 
armed force into Southern India. According to the story the 
leader of the expedition was Rama, a prince of Ajodhya, who, 
like Krishna, is regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu. He, 
and his devoted wife Sita, an ideal type of Indian womanhood, 
were banished, like the Pandava brothers, by a court intrigue, 
and went to a forest hermitage beyond the Vindhya Mountains 
on the banks of the Godavari, accompanied by Rama's faithful 
companion, his half-brother lyakshman. There, during the 
absence of Rama on a hunting expedition, Sita was abducted 
by the barbarian king of Ceylon, Ravana, described as a 
magician of terrific strength and skill. Rama thereupon roused 
the Aryan clans, and, gathering under his standard a great force 
of semi-civilised but brave aboriginal tribes of the South, 
he crossed over the straits which separate Ceylon from the 
mainland, stormed the demon-king's stronghold, and, having 
rescued Sita, came back in triumph to Ajodhya, where he 
was crowned as king in his father's place. 

It should be remembered that the two Indo-Aryan epics 
belong to Kshatriya literature and record the prowess of the 
42 



THE EPIC AGE 

Aryan military class. We must not assume, from the absence 
of any mention of it in Kshatriya records, that the early Aryan 
settlements had no intercourse with the ancient Dravidian 
kingdoms until Aryan civilisation was carried into the South 
by force of arms. No doubt the Vaisyas, the Aryan * people,' 
as distinguished from the nobles and priests, had commercial 
relations with the traders of Southern India long before any 
organised attempt was made to assert Aryan political supremacy 
over the Dravidian kingdoms — ^the peaceful penetration of the 
merchant, as usual, preceded, if it did not induce, the conquest 
by military force. Though the Tamil people retained their 
own language and many of their racial idiosyncrasies, they 
were deeply indebted to Aryan civilisation. Aryan influence 
must have been very great in the South long before the third 
century B.C., when Asoka sent his younger brother, Mahendra, 
to lead a band of Buddhist missionaries. The three oldest 
Dravidian dynasties of which there is any record, the Pandya, 
Kerala or Chera, and the Chola, all claimed descent from the 
Aryan heroes of the Mahabharata, and the Pandya country, 
like that of the first Aryan settlements in Northern India, 
was divided into five tribal districts known as the ' five 
Pandyas.' ^ 

The small progress that has as yet been made in the study of 
the early history of Indo- Aryan civilisation is in great measure 
due to the fact that, beyond the literary record contained in 
Vedic literature and the epics, hardly any evidence has yet been 
discovered of the life and culture either of the cities mentioned 
in the Mahabharata and Ramayana or those of the older 
Dravidian kingdoms in the South. The history of Indian art, 
so far as it is yet known, begins at the earliest only a few 
centuries before Christ, and the long epoch before that time, 
in which the foundations of Indian civilisation were laid, is 
still a blank as regards the archaeological material which 
contemporary civilisations in Egypt and Europe have so 
amply furnished. One reason for this is that the actual sites 
of these ancient cities are as yet unknown, for archaeological 
1 Vincent Smith, Early History of India, p. 405. 

43 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

research in India has onl}^ recently begun to penetrate beneath 
the surface of the ground. Another is the fact that the tropical 
climate of India is much more active than that of Europe 
in obliterating the traces of civilised life, while the tracts of 
desert sand in Rajputana and elsewhere which might, as in 
Egypt, preserve the remains of buried cities for an indefinite 
period, have not yet been explored. 



44 




CHAPTER III 

THE BUDDHA AS A STATESMAN AND 
SOCIAL REFORMER 

E come now out of that misty period, the Vedic and 
Epic ages, in which chronological points are vaguely 
fixed by millenniums and centuries instead of by 
years, to the sixth century before the Christian era, from which 
time a more or less complete sequence of chronological data has 
been collected by the labours of Oriental scholars and archaeo- 
logists. From the Brahmanical point of view the advent of 
the Buddha, about the year 563 B.C., was the starting-point 
of the great heresy which obscured the divine light of Vedic 
revelation, and hastened the fatal progress of Aryavarta along 
the paths of unrighteousness, which will not be arrested 
until at the end of the Kali age Vishnu's tenth avatar, 
Kalkin, comes riding on a white horse, sword in hand, to 
destroy iniquity and restore the divine rule of righteousness 
and truth. 

That Gautama Buddha disputed orthodox Brahmanical 
theories of the universe as the leader of a new religious sect 
was no new or startling event in Aryavarta. Aryan religion 
was already a synthesis of ideas, not a single dogma of belief. 
There was no subject more freely debated by Aryan thinkers 
than the great problems of human existence ; provided that 
his theory conformed to accepted laws of logic and stood the 
test of debate, anyone could obtain a hearing in the public 
disputations which took place under the village council tree, 
in the temple porch, or in the palace of the king, so that new 
sects and schools of . philosophy grew almost spontaneously 
on Indian soil, though few survived the struggle for existence. 
Nor was the Buddha philosophically an entirely original 

45 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

thinker. With regard to theories of the First Cause and of the 
human soul he was an agnostic of the Sankhya school and a 
follower of Kapila, whose aphorisms were a part of Brahmanical 
philosophic traditions before Gautama began to preach at 
Sarnath, and whose memory was enshrined in the name of the 
Buddha's birthplace — Kapilavastu. 

In order to understand the cause of the rapid progress of 
the Buddha's religious propaganda it is necessary to realise 
the social conditions of the time, and the relations of the 
Brahmanical priesthood to the rest of the community. Not 
only had the Brahmans become an organised intellectual force 
which asserted for itself the leading position in political affairs 
hitherto held by the Kshatriyas, but in ministering to the 
religious needs of the Indo-Aryan community at large they 
had established a monopoly which lent itself to unscrupulous 
exactions and to the encouragement of the grossest super- 
stitions. The ancient Vedic idea of the divine power of speech 
which had made Sarasvati, the goddess of learning, the sakti, 
or active force, of Brahma the Creator, had developed into the 
philosophical concept of the mantram as the human expression 
of the etheric vibrations which permeate space and were the 
first knowable cause of creation itself. So far as was humanly 
possible the mantram, a Sanskrit formula composed of a certain 
sequence of sounds and rhythm, was said to control these 
etheric vibrations and produce effects, beneficial or the reverse, 
to the persons or objects concerned. A mantram could bring 
victory or defeat in wars, assure the prosperity of a state or 
the destruction of its enemies ; it could be used to win votes 
in the popular assembly or to silence the arguments of an 
opponent, and either by itself or in conjunction with medicinal 
prescriptions it could stop a cough or promote the growth 
of hair. In short, the mantram embodied in itself the dynamic 
principle of the universe ; there was no concern of daily life, 
great or small, which could not be affected by it for better or 
worse. 

Now if the Brahman priesthood, as a class representing the 
intellectuality of the Aryan race, had lived up to the high 

46 



THE BUDDHA 

ideal of purity and altruism set forth in the laws of Manu 
and accepted as the guiding principle of Brahmanhood, or if 
it had been possible to restrict the privileges of the order to 
those who were fully qualified to exercise them, their exploita- 
tion of the universal belief in the magical powers of the 
mantram, whether that belief were justified or not, might 
have been at the lowest reckoning harmless and at the highest 
a strong incentive to the growth of moral and religious life 
in the whole community, Bven modern medical science, which 
has generally detached itself entirely from religious dogmas, 
has begun to revert to psychological remedies for the ills of 
the flesh, and the Sanskrit mantram as a form of prayer might 
be as acceptable to God as any other if the spirit which dictated 
it were truly religious. But the Brahmanical theory of the 
mantram implied that it contained in itself a divine principle, 
and the compelling power of the Deity Itself, though its use 
by ignorant or ill-disposed persons would be ineffectual or 
disastrous to themselves. The rule of life which the Brahman 
was presumed to follow was designed to prevent the abuse 
of the power of the mantram, but so long as Brahmanhood 
depended in the first instance entirely upon the accident of birth 
it would obviously fail in its purpose, and the influence exercised 
by unscrupulous or ignorant priests was bound to encourage 
superstition among the masses, and to become a hindrance 
to civihsation as well as a source of exaction and cruelty. 

Another instrument of tyranny and deception placed in the 
hands of the Brahmans was the Aryan belief in the divine 
power of sacrifice, which had come down from the earliest 
Vedic times. In the course of many centuries the performance 
of sacrificial rites had grown into a fine art, which the Brahman 
experts were not slow to use for their personal advantage, 
for the efficacy of the sacrifice was said to depend largely upon 
the liberality of the indispensable dakshina, or reward, bestowed 
upon the officiating priests and their servants. lyike the 
mantram, the application of Vedic sacrificial ritual extended 
to every concern of public and private life, great and small. 
The purity and divine power of the Brahrnan was said to 

47 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

be implicit in the fact that sacrificial rites were performed for 
his benefit from the time of conception in his mother's womb 
until his body was consigned to the bosom of holy Ganga or 
consumed in the funeral pyre. And not only did public 
sacrifices and the worship of tribal deities involve a vast 
expenditure of State revenues, but the household rites for 
which the services of Brahmans were generally necessary grew 
more and more numerous and complicated. Some of the great 
State ceremonies, such as the king's consecration and the 
horse sacrifice performed to secure victory and the welfare 
of the kingdom, absorbed the whole attention of the court 
functionaries for over a year, required the attendance of 
thousands of Brahmans and a corresponding bountiful dis- 
tribution of largesse, besides inordinate feasting and wholesale 
slaughter of animals. 

The due fulfilment of domestic sacrificial rites was equally 
onerous for the Aryan householder. Besides the ordinary 
daily rites at which the householder himself presided there 
were endless sacrificial ceremonies which required the attend- 
ance of Brahman experts. There were sacrifices for obtaining 
male offspring ; birth sacrifices which had to be repeated 
every month ; sacrifices of feeding, naming, piercing the ears, 
shaving the beard, and investiture with the sacred thread ; 
and numerous others connected with ordinary daily events 
or with marriage and death ceremonies. The indiscriminate 
slaughter of animals and the free indulgence in the intoxicating 
juice of the soma plant associated with Vedic ritual involved 
the tacit recognition by the Aryan priesthood of many bloody 
and obscene orgies of the uncivilised non- Aryan tribes, in which 
human victims were frequently sacrificed. 

Another superstition — ^though not by any means the exclu- 
sive property of the Brahman class — ^which the Buddha came 
to attack was the practice of tapas, or self-torture, by which 
it was believed that both gods and men acquired spiritual 
insight and command over the forces of nature. Sitting 
between five fires, or upon an ant-heap in the forest, standing 
upon one leg and holding an arm above the head until the 




3. The Buddha under the Bod hi Tree 



THE BUDDHA 

muscles of it were atrophied, and a carefully graduated system 
of starvation were among the means adopted for subduing 
the physical senses, in the belief that if such conduct were 
pushed to the furthest extreme of human endurance men 
could become masters of the universe, and that even the gods 
must submit to their will. 

It is easy to understand that in such a condition of society 
any new doctrine appealing to the deep religious instinct of 
the people which removed the terror of the mantram and 
the heavy burden of sacrificial ritual imposed by the Brahman 
priesthood would be hailed as an inspired dispensation alike 
by the ignorant masses from whom the Brahmans held aloof 
and by all the better spirits of Aryan culture. And no one 
could have been better qualified to make such an appeal than 
the young Kshatriya prince Gautama, who had renounced 
the dearest family ties, wealth, and a kingdom to discover 
a better rule of life for the people of Aryavarta than that 
which was propounded by the Brahman teachers of his 
time. He had no doubt learnt from the Brahmans of his 
father's court at Kapilavastu, the capital of the Sakyas — a 
full-blooded Indo-Aryan clan settled in the Nepal Terai — all 
that a Kshatriya prince should learn of Brahmanical lore. 
He had gone further and sat at the feet of the most famous 
Brahman sages to study philosophy. In the endeavour to 
acquire a deeper insight into the mysteries of the universe 
he had learnt the ritual of Yoga, and in the gloomy depths of 
the Vindhya forests had practised the severest tapas prescribed 
for ascetics who sought divine knowledge through mortification 
of the flesh. 

When, therefore, after long meditation under the Bodhi 
Tree at Gaya, the conviction of a profound truth flashed upon 
his mind and he started forth to preach the doctrine of the 
Aryan Eightfold Path, he was a master of all the philosophical 
theories current at his time. He was both able to meet the 
Brahman logician with his own weapons and to speak from 
personal experience of the religious observances to which all 
devout Aryans had pinned their faith from time immemorial. 

D 49 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

But if the young Kshatriya preacher had only stood forth in 
the public debating halls as an accomplished dialectician to 
confound the logic of the orthodox Brahman with incontro- 
vertible arguments and to enforce the doctrines of Sankhya 
and Yoga aphorisms with greater precision and clarity of 
thought, or if he had merely disputed the divine authority 
of the Vedas and the claims of the Brahmans to be the leading 
exponents of Vedic tradition, it is hardly likely that he would 
have stirred popular feeling profoundly, or that his teaching 
would have been regarded as a new revelation for the Aryan 
people. There were philosophers before the Buddha who 
disputed the Vedic theory of the Universal Soul. Among the 
' Wanderers,' a fraternity of mendicant sophists open to all 
classes within the Aryan pale, the greatest freedom of thought 
prevailed, and in the public debating halls of Aryavarta 
Brahmanical doctrines were controverted as freely as those 
of the orthodox Christian churches are at popular resorts of 
the present day in Europe. Brahmanism was an exclusive 
cult, hedged round with the closest restrictions to prevent the 
intrusion of the vulgar, though in special circumstances these 
restrictions might be relaxed, as through royal influence or 
in the stress of war-time. 

The success of Gautama's mission must have been due 
partly to his own magnetic personality and the deep human 
feeling which inspired his teaching, and partly to the fact that 
he opened wide the doors of Aryan religion and satisfied the 
spiritual desires of the masses by offering them a religious law 
easy to understand and accessible to all, free from elaborate 
and costly ceremonial, raising the social status of the lower 
orders, giving them their spiritual freedom and making the 
life of the whole community healthier and happier. 

Buddhism was much more a social than a religious revolution. 
It was a new interpretation rather than an entire repudiation 
of Vedic tradition. The sacrifice M^hich would make anyone 
within the Aryan pale. Brahman or Sudra, free of the Sangha — 
the brotherhood or congregation of believers — and potentially 
an adept in the mystic powers of the universe, was not of 
50 



THE BUDDHA 

burnt offerings or of worldly goods, but the suppression of 
the fires of evil thought and action, of lust, hatred, envy, 
anger, and wrong thinking. The village of which every Aryan 
might be a freeman was his own body : of this body the senses 
were the gates, the conscience was the gatekeeper, and the 
mind the headman.^ The Mangala-vithi, or Path of Blessing, 
which encircled it was the Aryan Eightfold Path of Good 
lyiving, and the mantram which was the key to the mysteries 
of the cosmos was the supreme Aryan truth — ^the law of 
Nirvana. 

It was no new city which the Buddha desired to build, but 
an ancient Aryan one which he would restore to prosperity and 
healthy life. " As a man, brethren, wandering in the forest, 
in the mountain jungle, might see an ancient path, an ancient 
road, trodden by men of an earlier age ; and following it, might 
discover an ancient township, an ancient palace, the habitation 
of men of an earlier age, surrounded by park and grove and 
lotus pool and walls, a delightful spot ; and that man were 
to go back and announce to the king or his minister : ' Behold, 
sir, and learn what I have seen ! ' And having told him he 
were to invite the king to rebuild that city, and that city 
were to become anon flourishing and populous and wealthy 
once more : — Even so, brethren, have I seen an ancient Path, 
an ancient Road, trodden by Buddhas of a bygone age . . . 
the which having followed, I understand life, and its coming 
to be and its passing away. And thus understanding, I have 
declared the same to the fraternity and to the laity, so that 
the holy life flourishes and is spread abroad once more, well 
propagated among men." '^ 

The Buddha's teaching must have been acceptable to 
Kshatriya feeling, both because it was directly opposed to 
the pretensions of the Brahman priesthood and because it 
upheld Aryan institutions and traditions. The Sangha which 
the Buddha founded was organised after the model of an 
Aryan clan ; it was a select spiritual brotherhood within the 
larger brotherhood of the secular Aryan community. There 

1 Buddhism, Mrs Rhys Davids^ p. i8i. ^ Ihid., pp. 33-34- 

Si 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

were four different grades of spiritual advancement within 
the Buddhist Sangha, as there were four classes denoting 
social status within the Aryan pale. And the Buddha was 
careful to ordain that his Sangha should not be used as a 
means of escaping secular obligations or of evading Aryan 
laws. No one could enter it to avoid payment of debts, 
neither were robbers, criminals who had been punished by 
branding, persons in the royal service, or slaves admitted. 

In the political unification of England, under Saxon rule, 
the ecclesiastical synods founded by Theodore in the seventh 
century a.d. were the first of all national gatherings for general 
legislation, and the canons enacted by them led the way 
to a national system of law. In England, the Parliament of 
the Church established by a foreign missionary was the pro- 
totype of the Parliament of the realm. ^ But the Buddha's 
mission in India in the sixth century before Christ was in 
no sense a propaganda of foreign ideas, and the administration 
of the Buddhist Church — afterwards followed in many details 
by the Church of Christ — was based entirely upon the ancient 
political institutions of the Aryan village community which 
formed the foundation of Indo-Aryan polity. Thus, the early 
Buddhist records are historical documents which throw much 
light upon the constitution and procedure of these ancient 
popular Assemblies. 

At the meetings of the Sangha all the members took their 
seats according to seniority, their places being assigned to 
them by an official called the Asana-prajinapaka — 'the Seat- 
arranger.' The proceedings opened by the president repeating 
the formula, " May the Honourable Sangha hear me ! If the 
time seems fit to the Sangha, let the Sangha act. This is 
the motion before the Sangha." After the motion had been 
read the proposer of it explained its purport, and onl}^ those 
who disapproved of it continued the debate. The president 
put the question whether the motion should be accepted or 
not. If there was no opposition after it had been put three times 
it was declared carried ; otherwise it was put to the vote and a 

^ Green'vS SJiovt History of the English People, p. 32. 
52 



THE BUDDHA 

majority of tlie Sangha, including absentees, decided the ques- 
tion. This was not, however, a system of government by majority 
vote in the modern political sense. In the Buddhist Sangha, 
as in the Aryan popular Assemblies, the unwritten traditional 
law was above any act of the Sangha and was not determined 
by a casual majority vote. No vote of the Sangha was valid 
which was contrary to the Dharma, the Truth or lyaw as 
revealed by the Buddha himself, which was the spiritual 
coimterpart of the common law of the Aryan pale. The only 
authority competent to adjudicate when the correct inter- 
pretation of the Dharma was in dispute was the General 
Assembly of the Sangha, the summoning of which was an 
event as important in Indian life as a General Election in 
Western politics. The proceedings of the most important 
of these General Assemblies, e.g. the one held at Rajagriha 
in 477 B.C., and another at Vaisali a century later, are recorded 
in the Buddhist annals. At ordinary meetings of the Sangha 
the teller of the votes, or arbitrator, who was elected for his 
impartiality, virtue, and knowledge, was charged with the 
duty of checking every decision of the majority, and of rejecting 
it as illegal if it were contrary to the Dharma.^ The Indo- 
Aryan political system was therefore a compromise between 
arbitration and majority rule. 

The Buddha's rare political insight revealed itself also in 
the method of all his teaching. He was most careful to insist 
that what he preached and the way his disciples should follow 
was the ' Aryan ' way. All his metaphors were taken from 
the life of the Aryan village community. He was not less 
successful in appealing to the intellectuality of the Aryan 
aristocracy than he was in touching their racial sentiment. 
Even among the Brahmans there were many sincere believers 
in the divine revelation of the Vedas who were, nevertheless, 
dissatisfied with the methods of Brahmanical ritual, and could 
not be blind to the charlatanism and superstition involved in 
them. The accumulated experience of many generations had 

^ Chullavagga, iv, 14, 26. There were three ways of taking votes : the 
secret method, the whispering method, and the open method. 

53 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

brought the conviction to their minds that, however great 
might have been the virtue of the mantram, and of mystical 
rites as used b}' the Vedic rishis in an age of greater spiritual 
purity, the practice of their own time brought no results 
commensurate with the burdens imposed upon the State and 
upon the routine of daily life. The doctrine of the law of 
causation propounded by the Buddha offered to them a 
middle path between pure atheism and a blind adherence to 
a religion whose ritual had lost its efficacy ; while the exact 
method of psychological analysis followed in the Buddhist 
schools might be accepted as a return to that profound study 
of natural causes and effects which had been the original 
basis of the concepts of Vedic philosophy. 

Even the bright nature-spirits — ' the Shining Ones ' ^ — to 
whom the prayers and sacrifices of Vedic religion were addressed, 
were not to be deposed from the position of veneration they 
had always held in the minds of the Aryan people : the 
Buddha's teaching only made them subject to the same 
impersonal eternal order of things, expressed by the concept 
of the Dharma or Norm, by which " all things animate and 
inanimate, gods included, had their being." ^ 

A clear illustration of the attitude of the early Buddhist 
Church towards Brahmanism is given in one of its earliest 
records, the Vindya Pitaka, or rules of discipline for the Sangha. 
Here Brahma, the Creator, is made to appear as a suppliant 
before the Buddha, imploring him to make his message known 
to the world. ^ 

While, therefore, the Buddha's propaganda naturally 
aroused bitter hostility among the Brahmans, whose vested 
interests were attacked, it was not really in conflict 
with the fundamental principles of Vedic religion or with 
the traditions of Aryan life. It was a reorganisation of 
Aryan society upon a wider basis, and a re-adaptation of 
religious thought to the spiritual needs of the times. The 
Dharma of sacrifice and mantram, which had become ineffec- 

* Devas. ^ Buddhism, Mrs Rhys Davids, p. 48. 

8 Mahavagga, I, 5, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xiii. 

54 



THE BUDDHA 

tive as practical politics for the Aryan people, was replaced 
by the Dharma of right thought and right living. The reason 
why the Buddha was denounced as a heretic, and from the 
Brahmanical standpoint regarded as an avatar of Vishnu ^ 
who came to rid the world of demons and wicked men by false 
doctrines which should lure them to destruction, was because 
his teaching, while outwardly conforming with the Vedic prin- 
ciples, opposed an agnostic view of the First Cause to the 
theory of a Universal Soul taught by the Upanishads, and 
because he lowered the standard of ritualistic purity upon 
which Brahman prestige depended, by breaking down the 
social barriers set up by the Aryan aristocracy. 

If, as a system of philosophy, the Buddha's teaching failed 
to retain a permanent hold upon the Indian mind until its 
concepts were enlarged and modified by Brahmanical ideas, 
its influence upon Brahmanism in inducing greater clarity of 
thought and a more scientific method of psychological analysis 
was immense. An historical parallel might be found in the 
influence which modern scientific investigations have had upon 
the teaching of the Christian Church, for the Buddha substi- 
tuted for the degenerate mysticism of contemporary Brahman- 
ism a scientific system of psychological research which opened 
the way to new religious inspirations in the same way as 
modern criticism and science have given greater depth and 
a better focus to religious thought in Europe. 

And just as modern science has approached towards a 
reconciliation with religious mysticism, so Buddhist and 
Brahmanical thought eventually found a via media along which 
they could go hand in hand. The Buddha's ethical teaching 
had the profoundest influence upon Brahmanism both in its 
ritualistic and spiritual aspects. Socially and politically 
Buddhism had the same effect in making India a nation as 
Christianity in the seventh century had in drawing together 
the petty principalities of the Saxon heptarchy. In breaking 
down the racial barriers of Aryavarta, and clearing the spiritual 

^ He was said to be the ninth avatar, the forerunner of Kalkin, who is 
to restore the Ivaw of Righteousness. 

55 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

atmosphere of superstition and priestly obscurantism, it bound 
together in closer ties of sympathy the whole political organisa- 
tion of the Aryan pale, and thus helped to lay the foundations 
of the great empire of the Mauryan dynast5^ 

In the Western sense of the term the Buddha was not a 
religious teacher, but a divinely inspired interpreter of psycho- 
logical laws, who showed the way by which mankind could 
be emancipated from the ills of the flesh and learn to be in 
harmony with themselves and with the universe. That, and 
not the propagation of religious dogmas or philosophical 
theories, has always been the true aim of Indo- Aryan religion. 
Indian philosophy as theory may have no interest for modern 
thinkers, but the vital part of it, its application to social and 
political life, still has a pregnant message for the world. The 
Buddha's prohibition of " the low arts of divination, spells, 
omens, astrology, sacrifices to gods, witchcraft, and quackery," 
relieved the Indian masses of a burden which had become a 
grievous impediment to their spiritual progress. 



56 



CHAPTER IV 

THE BUDDHIST AND JAIN SANGHAS- 
ALEXANDER'S RAID 



M 



ORB than two centuries elapsed after the death or 
Pari-Nirvdna of the Buddha, at Kusinagara in 483 B.C., 
before Asoka issued his imperial edicts which gave 
State recognition to the teachings of the Sakya Prince through- 
out the length and breadth of his vast dominions, and sent 
missionaries far and wide to preach the doctrine of the Aryan 
Eightfold Path to the world. Of the progress made by the 
Sangha, or Order, during the long life of the Buddha himself, 
and in the interval between his death and the accession of Asoka, 
comparatively little is known. But the detailed rules of the 
Order given in the Vindya Pitaka ^ are evidence that the 
Buddha possessed the genius for organisation which has 
always distinguished great Indo-Aryan leaders ; for the daily 
life of the bhikkus in their monasteries was regulated with 
an attention] to detail and thoroughness which would do 
credit to a modern Prussian barrack, though the spirit 
which moved ^the machine was the antipodes of Prussian 
militarism. 

No doubt the work of the Sangha was from the first of a 
missionary character, and the wandering bhikkus, taught by 
the Master or trained in the Buddhist schools, who went from 
village to village and from court to court preaching the Good 
Law under the Council Tree at the four crossways, in the 
pilgrims' rest-houses, in the public debating halls, and in 
royal palaces, must have made many converts both among the 
lower classes and among the Kshatriya nobles, who were always 
ready to listen to new philosophical theories, especially if 

* See Sacred Books of the East, vols, xiii, xvii, and xx. 

S7 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

opposed to orthodox Brahmanical teaching. But for over 
two centuries the Buddhist Sangha was only one of many 
similar religious organisations which represented dissent from 
Vedic Brahmanism, though not influential enough to gain 
popular support or to win many powerful patrons among the 
Aryan aristocracy, either Brahman or Kshatriya. One of 
the most important of these was the Sangha of the Jains, 
or Nigranthas, founded by Mahavira, a contemporary of the 
Buddha, although his tenets are said to have been expounded 
by a succession of twenty-three earlier sages, the Tirthankaras 
— some Brahman and some Kshatriya — whose history is entirely 
legendary. 

Mahavira himself was a Brahman, and he so far conformed 
to orthodox Brahmanical tradition that he recognised the 
practice of bodily mortification as a means of enlightenment ; 
but, like Gautama, he denied the divine authority of the 
Vedas, denounced the cruelty of animal sacrifices, and pro- 
claimed a religion of universal love and brotherhood. Philo- 
sophically Mahavira opposed to the monistic teaching of the 
Upanishads and the Buddha's agnostic doctrines a theory of 
the multiplicity of souls and of the permanence of matter. 
The universe was said to be divided into two elements — life 
and non-life. Every living being was said to be the centre 
of innumerable minute divisions of matter, called Karmas, 
possessing potential and kinetic energies, and surrounding and 
concealing the true nature of the soul.^ Karmas were of two 
qualities, progressive and retrogressive, and could be generated 
by every embodied being through mind, speech, and action, 
either by one's self or through other beings. This theory of 
Karma differed from the Vedic one, which made sacrifice the 
directing and compelling force of the universe, and from the 
Buddhist one, in which Karma was entirely separate from 
matter. Every Jiva, or living being, said Mahavira, possessed 
a soul which by liberation from Karmas could attain to 
godhead or perfect omniscience. The twenty-four Jinas, 
or Conquerors of Self, worshipped by the Jains are those 

^ U. D. Barodia, History and Literature of Jainism, pp. 124-125. 
58 



BUDDHIST AND JAIN SANGHAS 

who are said to have attained to this absolute perfection of 
soul. 

The Jain, like the Buddhist 'Sangha, was a fraternity in 
which the discipline of mind and body necessary for progress 
towards Nirvana, or liberation of the Jiva from the effects of 
Karma, was taught ; but the former organisation was made 
to include the laity, who merely abstained from flesh-eating 
and adapted the other ethical principles of Jainism to the 
ordinary vocations of life, as well as those who renounced the 
world and conformed to a more or less severe ascetic discipline. 
The Buddhist Sangha, on the contrary, did not include the 
laity, but was limited to those who were permitted to take 
the vows of the Order. 

The field of Mahavira's mission was also in Magadha — after- 
wards known as Bihar, or ' the Land of Monasteries ' [vihdras] 
— and in the neighbouring kingdoms of Videha and Anga. 
At his death in 467 B.C. the Jain Sangha is said to have num- 
bered over five hundred thousand members, and subsequently 
the nine kings of the Nanda dynasty of Magadha (371-321 B.C.) 
were patrons of the Order. The founder of the Mauryan 
dynasty, Chandragupta, as well as his Brahman minister, 
Chanakya, were also inclined towards Mahavira's doctrines, 
and even Asoka is said to have been led towards Buddhism 
by a previous study of Jain teaching. Jainism and Buddhism 
have so much in common, that for many years European 
scholars believed that the modern Jain religion was wholly 
derived from Buddhism. They were both the outcome of the 
revolt against the orthodox Brahman cult, as it was developed 
in the land of the Five Rivers, which had its centre in Madhya- 
desa in the sixth century B.C. The leaders of this revolt were 
both of Aryan race. In some respects it was a Vedic reforma- 
tion, or revival of the spirituality of the ancient Aryan faith, 
but at the same time it coincided with the great expansion 
of the Aryan pale which took place in the course of centuries : 
the spiritual aspirations of the non- Aryan elements within the 
pale lent much force to the movement, and helped considerably 
to shape the thought which directed it. 

59 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Before we proceed to sketch the progress of Indo-Aryan | 
civilisation after the death of Gautama, it is necessary to 1 
notice briefly the great pohtical events which led up to the 
founding of the Mauryan dynasty in 321 B.C. The most 
picturesque and romantic is the famous raid of Alexander 
the Great into the Panjab, which took place five years bef ore 1 
Chandragupta Maurya seized the throne of Magadha. It is| 
usual to connect this great military achievement with the first 
opening up of intercourse between India and Europe, though 
such a view of it gives a very wrong impression of the mutual 
relationship of East and West in one of the most eventful 
epochs of the world's history. In the sixth and seventh 
centuries before Christ, though the political boundaries of the 
three great branches of the Aryan race — the Hellenic, Iranian, 
and Indo-Aryan — ^were clearly defined, and though political 
differences raised considerable barriers between them, there 
was a community of ideas and a similarity of spiritual aspira- j 
tions binding the three branches together which no political | 
distinctions could obliterate. ] 

While Mahavira and Gautama were propounding their 
theories of the universe in the debating halls of Magadha, 
Heracleitus of Ephesus was discoursing on elemental matter;^ 
and the nature of the soul in the porticoes of Ionian temples. 
About the same time Pythagoras of Samos preached the 
doctrine of the One in Many, and founded a religious Sangha 
in which strict abstinence from animal food was enforced.^ 
The cities of Ionia, and not Athens and Sparta, were then; 
the centre of Hellenic culture, and the antithesis implied ini 
the modern use of the terms East and West had no applica- 
tion to the international conditions of that period. Commer- ; 
cial intercourse between the Greek cities of Asia Minor and ' 
India, through the Euphrates valley, must have been con- j 
siderable, and the lack of facilities of travel according to • 
modern ideas probably was no greater impediment to the 
enterprising Ionian than it was to European travellers in the; 
days of Marco Polo. 

1 H. B. Cotterill, Ancient Greece, p. 209 (Harrap). 
60 



BUDDHIST AND JAIN SANGHAS 

Along the main trade routes which stretched from Southern 
;ndia into Asia Minor, travelHng in those times was perhaps 
10 more difficult and dangerous than it remained until the 
ntroduction of railways. Pilgrims and merchants did not 
ecognise the artificial boundaries set up by historians and the 
bolitical rivalries of states, and if there is little circumstantial 
lividence of the extent of their travels, it is because in this age 
lardly anything was thought worthy of epigraphical record 
except military expeditions, political laws, and the chronicles 
)f kings. In the history of civilisation, however, the water- 
shed of the mountainous region which stretches from the 
[lorth-eastern corner of India into the heart of Asia Minor 
and the valleys of the mighty rivers which flow from it formed 
I continent by itself in which the three branches of the Aryan 
race were, in the sixth century before Christ, in close contact 
with each other. The differences between them arose from 
political circumstances rather than intellectual antipathies, 
jmd these political circumstances were largely governed by the 
ttrength or weakness of the Aryan element in the population. 
Where the Aryan element, racial or intellectual, predominated, 
;he political tendency was towards popular institutions and 
constitutional government. Where it was weak the autocratic 
3rinciple of government prevailed. 

In 538 B.C., or about the time when the Prince Siddhartha 
s said to have left his home and palace for the life of an ascetic 
n search of spiritual wisdom, Cyrus the Great overthrew 
Babylon and became the autocrat of an empire which comprised 
ill the Aryan lands in Asia north of the Himalayas. Aryan 
fulture had not penetrated very deeply into the mass of the 
|)opulation of this vast empire, but the dominant power in it, 
yhich was Persian, maintained the high spiritual ideals of 
|:he Aryan race. 

Zoroaster, who is beheved to have lived about this time, 
ivas an Aryan thinker of the Vedic school who protested 
igainst sacerdotal corruption and obscurantism, and some 
vriters have suggested that the Persians under Cyrus, Cam- 
Dyses, and Darius were inflamed with a desire for world-conquest 

61 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

by the spiritual enthusiasm aroused by Zoroaster's teaching.^ 
But in Persia the Magi, who corresponded to the Brahmans 
in India, were poHtically a very powerful class : the Aryan 
aristocracy held themselves proudly aloof from the non- 
Aryan masses, and Zoroaster does not appear to have been — 
like the Buddha and Mahavira — both a philosopher and social 
reformer who could arouse a widespread religious fervour, 
such as that which under Asoka broke down racial barriers 
and made India a nation. The Magi successfully resisted 
any encroachment upon their prerogatives, and the autocracy 
centred in the great cities of Iran failed to consolidate the 
loosely cohering racial elements of the empire, as Chanakya 
and Chandragupta did through the Indo-Aryan system of 
local self-government. There is little evidence to show how 
far the Indo-Aryan system of administration prevailed in the 
empire of the Achaemenidae. The ' royal road ' of 1500 miles 
between Sardis and Susa, mentioned by Herodotus, is strikingly 
suggestive of the Rajapatha and the four crossways of the 
Indo-Aryan village ; but the popular assemblies, if they existed, 
probably had very little political influence in such a highly 
centralised system of government, though when Darius — a 
scion of the royal house — succeeded to the throne in 521 B.C. 
some form of election seems to have been observed. 

The conflict of the free cities of Hellas with Darius of Persia 
was, however, the assertion of Aryan political principles against 
irresponsible autocracy rather than an opposition of intel- 
lectual and spiritual ideals, or a struggle between Western 
civilisation and Eastern barbarism, as it is usually represented. 
Even Herodotus was constrained to admit the moral ^drtues 
and magnanimity of the Persian character — their intense love 
of truth and contempt for deceit and treacher}'^ — principles 
which later Greek historians notice with surprise were respected 
in Aryan society south of the Himalayas at least as much as 
they were in Hellas. 

After the death of Cjtus the Persian Empire was further 
enlarged by the conquest of Egypt. Darius I added an Indian 

^ H. R. Hall, Ancient History of the Near East, p. 555. 
62 



ALEXANDER'S RAID 

province which paid the enormous annual tribute of 360 
Euboic talents — 185 hundredweights — of gold-dust and sent 
a contingent of archers to the imperial army. It was a natural 
sequence, therefore, when about two centuries later the Mace- 
donian autocracy had become supreme in Hellas, that Alex- 
ander should seek to follow up the destruction of the Persian 
empire by appropriating the wealth which India had accu- 
mulated under the Indo-Aryan village system, though by that 
time the provinces south of the Indus had thrown off the 
suzerainty of Persia. The brilliant feat of arms by which 
Alexander only partially achieved his purpose is only important 
in Indian history as an incident leading up to the foundation 
of the Mauryan Empire. Alexander's expedition did not lead 
to the opening up of new highways between East and West — 
rather the reverse. 

Two years after Alexander left India the few provinces he 
conquered had thrown off the Macedonian yoke, the Greek 
garrisons he left behind were annihilated, and the consolidation 
of the Indo-Aryan power under the Mauryan dynasty for a 
long time prevented any further aggression from the north- 
west. The raid itself could have left no impression upon 
Indian civilisation. In the after-period, when Greece had lost 
all political influence and the Hght of Hellenic inspiration 
grew more and more dim, Indo-Aryan civilisation continued 
to advance, and showed no signs of decadence a thousand 
years later. The conditions which made Greek culture an 
inspiration for her Roman conquerors had no counterpart in 
India. The Indo-Aryans, unlike the Romans, had their classic 
literature, their epics and philosophy, before Athens was built. 
The classics of Greece in art and literature were part of the 
spoils which the Romans won in war, but India did not conquer 
Greece, and at the closest contact of Hellenic and Indo-Aryan 
culture the latter had by far the greater vitality and creative 
power. The points of resemblance between the two, which 
have impressed Western writers so strongly, came from their 
common ancestry and racial traditions. 

The story of the raid must be briefly told. Alexander 

63 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

arrived at the Indus in the beginning of 326 B.C., and, profiting 
by the quarrels of the Indian tribes, crossed over without 
opposition and entered the city of Taxila, or Taksha-sila, a 
great centre of Brahmanical learning and the capital of a 
principality then at war with its more powerful neighbours. 
Here Alexander received the homage of the local raja and 
obtained supplies and troops to assist his attack upon Poros 
(Purusha), the head of an important federation of tribes in 
the district between the Jhilam and Chenab rivers, who was 
preparing to resist his further advance with a force of 30,000 
footmen, 4000 horsemen marshalled by Kshatriya chieftains 
mounted on 500 war-chariots, and many elephants. Alexander 
by his strategy effected the difficult passage of the Hydaspes 
(Jhilam) river in the face of Poros' army, and with a force of 
about 17,000 men completely routed and nearly annihilated 
the enemy on the other side in a pitched battle, in which the 
desperate valour of Poros and his Kshatriya nobles was of 
no avail against the superior tactics, mobility, and equipment 
of the Macedonian cavalry. Poros was badly wounded and 
taken prisoner, but Alexander, with fine diplomacy, respected 
the Indo-Aryan tradition that a conquered king should not 
be dispossessed of his ancestral rights, and after Poros had 
acknowledged him as suzerain not only restored the kingdom 
to his gallant foe but added a considerable territory to it. 

Having thus made his communications secure and\eceived 
the submission of several adjacent Indian states, Alexander 
advanced as far as the Hyphasis (Bias) river, in the modern 
Gurdaspur district, but at this point his exhausted European 
soldiers refused to go further. He then retreated to one of the 
fortified posts he had left on the banks of the Chenab, and 
there his army was reinforced by twelve thousand fresh troops 
sent from Europe. Having then made various administrative 
arrangements with his Indian vassals, Alexander, with their 
assistance, prepared a large fleet and, protected by a strong 
army on the banks of the river, sailed down the Jhilam to 
its confluence with the Chenab, and thence to the next con- 
fluence with the Hydraotes or Ravi. Various confederations 

64 



ALEXANDER'S RAID 

of warlike tribes offered a desperate but ineffective resistance 
to the passage of his forces, and in storming one of their strong- 
holds Alexander was dangerously wounded by an arrow. On 
his recovery he continued his victorious progress by land and 
water until at last he reached the ocean through the delta 
of the Indus. From thence he began to march his army 
back to Susa, but the greater part of it, with most of the 
rich spoils of the expedition, was lost on the way through 
the terrible privations to which it was exposed in the deserts. 
Nearchos, his admiral, was more successful in conducting his 
fleet safely up the Persian Gulf to the Euphrates. The Indian 
part of the campaign lasted about nineteen months. It was, 
on the whole, a triumphant success from a military point of 
view. Alexander added to his empire an Indian province 
probably very much larger than that which had acknowledged 
the suzerainty of Persia, but the conqueror, broken in health 
by the difficulties of the campaign, died in Babylon within a 
year after his return. 



65 



CHAPTER V 

THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

A YEAR after Alexander's departure from India the revolt 
of tlie conquered provinces began, with the Brahman 
university town as its centre. There a learned 
Brahman of conspicuous ability, Chanakya by name, well 
versed in Indo-Aryan polity — ^which included diplomacy and 
military science — had for his companion or pupil a young 
nobleman named Chandragupta, who was connected on his 
father's side with the Nanda dynasty of Magadha, though his 
mother is said to have been the daughter of the keeper of the 
king's peacocks {Mayura-poshaka), and hence his family name 
was Maurya.^ 

Chandragupta, having been concerned in a conspiracy against 
the king, had been obliged to fly from the court of Pataliputra, 
and was at Taksha-sila at the time of the Macedonian occupa- 
tion of the town. Possibly he suggested to Alexander the 
attempted conquest of Magadha, which was prevented by the 
mutiny of his European troops at the Hyphasis. King Poros, 
Alexander's vassal, had been put to death by one of the Greek 
satraps. This had aroused the fury of the Indo-Aryan popula- 
tion. Philippos, the governor of one of the provinces, had 
been murdered, and the general discontent only needed a leader 
to throw it into open revolt. As soon as the news of Alexander's 
death reached Taksha-sila, Chandragupta seized the oppor- 
tunity to expel the hated Macedonians and revenge himself 
against the Magadhan king. Aided by Chanakya, he roused 
the clans of the Panjab, who fell upon and annihilated most 
of Alexander's garrisons. He then marched at their head 

1 U. D. Barodia, History and Literature of Jainism, p. 14. Mr Vincent SmitU 
derives Maury a fron; his toother's n^me, Mnra, 

66 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

against Pataliputra and overthrew the Magadhan king, 
who was deposed, or, according to Greek accounts, put to 
death. 

Thus in 321 B.C. the dynasty of the Mauryas succeeded that 
of the Nandas on the throne of Magadha. The lesson of 
Alexander's raid was not lost upon Chandragupta and his 
crafty Brahman counsellor, for they quickly followed up their 
first successes by compelling or persuading all the smaller 
states of Northern India to acknowledge the suzerainty of 
Magadha, so that in a few years' time Chandragupta's empire 
stretched from sea to sea and Aryavarta, instead of being torn 
asunder by the dissensions and rivalries of numerous tribal 
confederations, was united under a strong central government, 
and could present an unbroken front to any foreign aggressor. 
The political wisdom of this policy was justified seventeen 
years after Chandragupta's accession, when Seleukos — one of 
Alexander's generals, who had been most successful in the 
general scramble for the fragments of the Macedonian empire 
which had followed upon the death of his sovereign — sought to 
add to his dominions the Indian provinces Alexander had 
conquered. Seleukos crossed the Indus in 305 B.C., but 
Chandragupta inflicted such a crushing defeat upon him that 
I he was not only forced to retire hastily, but had to submit 
' to a humiliating bargain, by which he ceded to his Indian rival 
I large districts west of the Indus, extending as far as the modern 
i cities of Kabul and Herat, by way of dowry for a daughter 
I sent to Chandragupta's zanana in exchange for a hundred 
I elephants. An officer named Megasthenes was sent to repre- 
sent Seleukos at Chandragupta's court, and his account of 
India in the third century before Christ, preserved in a very 
: fragmentary form in quotations by later writers, is extremely 
interesting, and as reliable as such documents usually are in 
the present day. Some glimpses of Chandragupta's personality 
are given in popular legends, but materials for a detailed 
biography are non-existent. His great minister, Chanakya, 
however, is the reputed author of a treatise on Hindu polity 
and political economy, the KauUUya-artha-Sa^tra, which gives 

67 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

a better insight into Indo- Aryan civilization under the Mauryan 
Empire than ordinary chronicles of royalty. 

It must be observed that the Kautiliya-artha-Sdstra and 
similar works of a later date are compendiums of the rules and 
traditions governing the central administration of an Indo- 
Aryan state, written for the guidance of the king and his 
ministers. They do not, therefore, enter into a detailed 
account of the self-government of the village communities, 
or of the tribal confederations which maintained a republican 
or oligarchical form of government. The organisation of the 
Magadhan Empire, as described in the Kautiltya-artha-Sdstra, 
must not be regarded as a new system of law or political 
economy, devised by Chandragupta and his ministers, but as 
a digest of traditional laws, revised to meet the conditions of 
the times, and as a plan of co-ordination of the different political 
systems of Aryavarta — all based upon the Indo-Aryan village 
community — for the purpose of national defence. 

Chandragupta's government, according to Greek writers, 
was severe and even cruel. Passages in Kautiliya regarding 
the punishment of criminals and the torture of prisoners to 
elicit confession support this view, but the customs of the 
time and the state of anarchy which would have followed 
the break-up of the Macedonian administration must be taken 
into account, Chandragupta, however, was no despot like 
Darius of Persia. He had won his way to power with the 
help of the republican tribes of the Panjab, and though the 
safety of the realm demanded that their turbulence should be 
checked, Kautiliya strongly upholds the principles of the ancient 
Aryan constitution and the rights of the Aryan freeman. 
He treats of the * duties ' of a king towards his subjects, not of 
his divine prerogatives. " In their happiness lies his happi- 
ness, in their welfare his welfare." No Aryan, even a Sudra, 
must be sold into slavery permanently. Only in times of 
family trouble, or to raise money for paying court fines or 
State dues, was it lawful as a temporary expedient, but in 
such cases it was incumbent upon the nearest relatives to 
effect the release of the bondsman as soon as possible. It 
68 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

was no crime for Mlechchhas (foreigners) to sell or mortgage 
their children, but every Aryan of the ' Five Peoples ' was a 
freeman and had the status of a Roman citizen unless he 
offended against Aryan law. 

Chandragupta's government was a firm and strong one, but 
not one of military force alone. He had no dreams of world- 
conquest. His policy, and that of his astute minister, was to 
consolidate the strength of Aryavarta, not to create an auto- 
cracy after the Persian model. It was a continuation and 
extension of a process of political amalgamation which had 
been going on for centuries before Alexander's raid gave it a 
new impetus. The republican form of government which 
obtained among many of the Aryan tribes was not suppressed, 
though in Kautiliya it is regarded as a source of political 
weakness. Neither were the traditional rights of the village 
communities or their powers of local self-government altogether 
ignored in the bureaucratic control set up by the Mauryan 
imperial government for the purpose of removing the weakness 
of Indo-Aryan polity, which had been revealed by the success 
of Alexander's invasion. It need not be assumed that the 
popular assemblies lost all their political influence because 
Kautiliya makes no mention of them. They certainly con- 
tinued to exercise considerable power in later times, and 
Megasthenes noticed that in Southern India they checked the 
power of kings, and that all Indians were regarded as freemen. 
Chandragupta's will may have been law within his empire, 
but he was none the less a constitutional monarch bound by 
the common law of Aryavarta. The ordinances of Kautiliya 
evidence a strict desire for justice between man and man. 
Though Chanakya was himself a Brahman, he does not exalt 
hi,s class to divine rank or exempt it from heavy punishment. 
A Brahman was not to be tortured, but he could be heavily 
fined and even his whole property might be confiscated, while 
for the worst offences he could be condemned to work in the 
mines — for him a particularly degrading form of punishment. 
The attention given to hospitals and sanitation, the provision 
made for famine and poor relief, and the careful regulation of 

69 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

taxation are all evidences of the wise and liberal statesmanship 
of Chandragupta's government. 

The numerous regulations and ordinances detailed in the 
Artha-Sdstra were not arbitrary enactments. They are a digest 
of polity recognized by the traditions of Indo-Aryan govern- 
ment, adapted to the special circumstances of the time by 
Chandragupta and his Council — a system of government which, 
in principle at least, is strikingly similar to that of the British 
Raj. 

Kautiliya declares that villages were first classified according 
to their size into three classes, and then subdivided for revenue 
purposes into five more. First were those which paid no 
taxes — ^these would be religious and educational communities 
and others specially exempted. The next were those which 
furnished soldiers to the imperial army instead of paying 
taxes. The third class were those which paid the customary 
royal dues either in grain, cattle, gold, or raw materials ; the 
fourth those which supplied free labour for public works, or, 
in the case of artisans, manufactured goods ; and the fifth 
were agricultural communities which furnished dairy produce 
to the imperial establishments. 

For the administration of the royal city numerous regula- 
tions were made, but villages were apparently left to conduct 
their own affairs according to Aryan law and custom. There 
were, however, some significant restrictions. No ascetic 
other than a vdnaprastha or forest recluse, no association other 
than one of local origin, and no guilds except local co-operative 
guilds were to be allowed in the villages of the kingdom (Book II, 
chap, i, 48). The object of these regulations was, no doubt, 
to put a check upon the political influence of religious or indus- 
trial bodies which might become inimical to the interests of 
the State. The ascetic was always a person of considerable 
influence with the people : according to the old Hindu law- 
books even the king was bound in matters of difficulty to seek 
out an ascetic of high repute and act according to his advice. 
The constitution of religious Sanghas might, therefore, become 
a danger to the State if they were allowed to exist within the 
70 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

boundaries of the secular pale. Their place was outside the 
active life of the world, in the forest retreat, in the hermit's 
cave, or in the holy places reserved for pilgrimages. The 
industrial organisations, such as craft-guilds, were made 
subject to a similar law in the interest of the whole commu- 
nity. So long as they applied the co-operative principle, 
which Kautiliya shows was well understood in ancient India, 
solely for economic efficiency they were within their rights. 
But they were not to be allowed to become a political power 
which would usurp the functions of the king and his ministers, 
or those of the popular assemblies and other local bodies 
charged with the administration of local affairs. 

There was a different grouping of villages made both for 
economic purposes and for national defence. Among every 
ten villages there was a central one, adequately fortified, which 
served as a common market and a rallying-place in time of 
war. A county or district containing two hundred villages 
had also its central market and fort, called a kharvatika. A 
larger district containing four hundred had a drona-mukha 
as its centre ; while the chief provincial capital, around which 
eight hundred villages were grouped, was strongly defended 
by a fortress called a sthdniya. 

Aryan India had always regarded the maintenance and 
protection of the public highways as one of the duties for the 
performance of which the king was responsible, and Kautiliya 
shows the great importance which was attached to it from a 
military and economic point of view. The two cross-roads 
of the village — ^the Rajapatha and the Mahakala — as we have 
already seen, were the two main lines of communication between 
village and village ; the former, which ran east and west, 
being the chief military road and the latter the chief commer- 
cial route. The principal Rajapatha, or royal road, of Chandra- 
gupta's empire was that which passed through Pataliputra and 
continued right up to the north-western frontier. Along 
these main routes trees were planted, wells were dug, and post- 
houses, police-stations, and hostels for travellers were built at 
regular intervals. Megasthenes mentions that pillars were 

71 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

set up at every ten stadia (about i^ miles) to mark distances 
and serve as signposts. Imperial and provincial officers looked 
after their upkeep and proper repair, the towns and villages 
through which they passed providing the labourers, who were 
exempted from taxation. Fines were imposed upon those 
who obstructed the traffic or damaged the roads. 

Kautiliya details many different kinds of roads, classifying 
them according to use and destination. In the towns and 
forts there were roads for chariots paved with stones or planks 
of palm-trees, roads for beasts of burden and for general traffic, 
and roads leading to cremation-grounds. In the districts, 
besides the main roads, cart- and cattle-tracks, and foot- 
paths, there were roads leading to the central villages and 
forts above mentioned, roads connecting the smaller villages, 
roads leading to mines and to pastures, gardens, groves and 
forests, and elephant preserves. Each road had a specified 
width, varying from four feet for footpaths and cattle-tracks 
to thirty-two feet, and twice that width for the royal roads and 
main trade routes. Among the vehicles using these roads 
six kinds of chariots are mentioned : the car of the god used 
in temple processions and another used at public festivals, 
the ordinary war-chariot and a special one used in foreign 
expeditions, one used for military training, and the common 
travelUng car. There were two different kinds of palanquins, 
and several descriptions of bullock-carts. Merchandise was 
carried by carts, camels, asses, and by human porters. 

The regulation of water-borne traffic was the concern of a 
separate department of the State. In the earliest times, 
before agriculture had been greatly developed, and before the 
village communities had been linked together by an organized 
system of roads, the waterways must have been the easiest 
means of passage through the dense forest and jungle, and the 
chief line of communication between the principal Aryan 
settlements. Tradition fixed the bank of a river at a curve 
inclined towards east and west or at the confluence of two 
rivers as the most auspicious site for an Aryan village settle- 
ment. The holy rivers of Aryavarta must have been for the 
72 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

early Indo-Aryans what tlie rivers of Mesopotamia were to 
the Aryans of Iran, and have served the same purpose in 
their struggles with the Dasyus as the Tigris or Euphrates in 
the contest between the Aryan Kassites and Mitannians and 
their hereditary foes, the Asuras (Assyrians). They were the 
best military routes and the most important highways of 
commerce. 

No doubt the Aryans had inherited the science of irrigation 
which they brought into India from their long tenure of the 
Euphrates valley, and the construction and maintenance of 
canals and reservoirs had been from very early times regarded 
as public works for which the king was responsible. Thus the 
name of one of Chandragupta's provincial governors, Pushya- 
gupta, has been handed down to posterity on account of the 
Lake Beautiful {Sudarsana) at Girnar, which he formed by 
damming up a mountain stream with a great wall of masonry. 
This irrigation work, as inscriptions testify, was enlarged and 
kept in repair for eight hundred years by Pushyagupta's 
successors under Asoka and later emperors of the Gupta 
dynasty ; but in the troublous times which followed it fell 
into ruin and became buried in the jungle. 

Chandragupta's irrigation department was in charge of the 
construction and maintenance of canals and reservoirs which 
were too great to be undertaken by the effort of the village 
communities separately : it inspected the sluices, measured 
the lands which had to be irrigated, and regulated the supply 
of water " so that every one had an equal supply of it " — a 
duty which in the case of minor irrigation works belonged to 
the village headman. Water was raised from the canals both 
by bullocks and by windmills. Kautilij^a gives the rates 
charged for the supply of water, varying from one-fifth to one- 
third of the produce, according to the system employed — also 
the fines which were imposed for neglect of the regulations. 
He advises the observation of the relative rainfall in different 
parts of the country and in different seasons, and the possi- 
bility of forecasting the rainfall by the position of the sun 
and planets and the different cloud-formations is mentioned. 

73 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

The department of navigation was a separate one charged 
■with the duty of protecting travellers against river and sea 
pirates, of providing and maintaining harbours, ferries and 
bridges, and regulating all water traffic. Government vessels 
were made available for the transport of merchandise by 
sea and river ; the department was responsible for their 
being properly equipped and manned, and in the event of a 
vessel being lost or damaged owing to departmental neglect 
the State was liable to make good the merchant's loss. Travel- 
ling was encouraged officially, for passengers were taken in 
the king's ships upon payment of passage-money. Government 
vessels could also be hired for pearl and conch fishery. 

There were both private and Government ferries, and a 
considerable variety of them. Besides boats suitable for 
crossing large rivers, and for the transport of criminals and 
vehicles, there were, as at the present time in India, such 
primitive arrangements as rafts of timber or bamboo tied 
together, baskets covered by skin, gourds, and inflated leather 
bags. Bridges were made solidly of wood, brick, and stone, 
or were improvised by means of boats or by elephants. The 
regulation of traffic was co-ordinated with the administration 
of the criminal law, for the departmental officers, besides 
destroying piratical craft, were authorised to arrest any 
criminals or suspected persons, such as a man carrying off 
another man's wife or daughter, thieves and smugglers, persons 
in disguise and secret emissaries, those not provided with a 
pass, or travellers who had no baggage. To facilitate the 
suppression of brigandage and the maintenance of the peace 
of the realm, and also to secure the safety of travellers, it was 
ordained that no one should use the State ferries without 
permission and at other than the appointed times, but excep- 
tions were made in the case of fishermen, those who were 
carrying perishable goods such as flowers and vegetables, 
persons pursuing criminals, messengers, and others. In 
monsoon times, when the rivers were in flood, and in crossing 
dangerous rivers, all travellers were obliged to use the State 
ferries. 

74 






THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

Kautiliya mentions seagoing vessels, both for coastal traffic 
and for longer voyages to Burma and China : oversea trade 
was encouraged, both by facilities granted to well-known 
foreign merchants, and by special rules for financing trade in 
the Indian seaports. Both river- and sea-fishing were under 
the control of the department; and fishing villages, in lieu 
of the agricultural tax, had to pay royal dues at the usual 
rate, i.e. one-sixth on the catch of fish. 

Pataliputra, Chandragupta's capital, was planned on a 
magnificent scale on the auspicious site formed by the con- 
fluence of the Son with the Ganges. I^ike other Indo-Aryan 
cities, it had a long river-front, extending for about nine miles, 
with embankments of brick and harbours. The breadth of 
the city was a mile and a half. Its massive timber walls 
were defended by three successive brick-lined moats filled 
with water, and by lofty towers built over the sixty-four gates, 
as in modern temple gopurams, with several hundred smaller 
ones between them. The royal palace, which occupied a 
central position, and was placed in a fine wooded park laid out 
with fountains and fish-ponds, was described by Megasthenes 
as being more splendid than those of Susa and Ecbatana. Its 
pillars were plated with gold and ornamented with designs of 
birds and foliage in gold and silver, and it was magnificently 
furnished with thrones and chairs of state, and great vessels of 
gold, silver, and copper set with precious stones. Excavations 
recently made on the site of Pataliputra have revealed what 
are supposed to be the foundations of the palace, and an 
arrangement of pillars similar to that of the Apadana at Perse- 
polis, whence it has been somewhat hastily assumed that 
Chandragupta sent for foreign builders to build him a palace 
on the Persian model, just as in modern times Anglo-Indian 
builders copy the plans of European buildings. Doubtless 
the fame of Chandragupta would have attracted craftsmen of 
all kinds from far and near, especially master-builders of 
repute, who were always accustomed to seek employment 
wherever it might be found when royal capitals were in the 
making. But Indian history did not begin with Chandragupta 

75 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and tlie Indo-Aryan building tradition was an ancient one 
when Pataliputra was founded. The inference to be drawn 
from the fact that an Indo-Aryan imperial palace resembled an 
Iranian one in its general scheme is merely that Aryan culture 
in India and Iran inherited the same traditions, not that 
Chandragupta was of set purpose imitating the palace of 
Darius. So great a champion of the Indo-Aryan cause and 
the founder of the greatest Indo-Aryan dynasty known in 
history would hardly be likely to celebrate the freedom of 
Aryavarta from the Macedonian yoke by imposing on it the 
intellectual domination of Persia, The Kautiliya-artha-Sdstra 
shows that Chandragupta's statesmanship was wholly inspired 
by Indo-Aryan tradition. 

Megasthenes' description of Pataliputra may be supple- 
mented by details given in Chanakya's summary of Indo- 
Aryan polity. To the north of the royal palace was the temple 
of the Ishta-devata of the imperial family, the tutelary deity 
of the city, and in every other quarter shrines were built to 
the guardian deities of the community residing in them. The 
northern quarter was assigned to Brahmans and certain of 
the higher craftsmen, such as the armourers, ironsmiths, and 
workers in precious stones. In the north-west quarter were 
bazars and hospitals : the latter were provided with stores of 
medicines which were replenished at regular intervals from 
the Government stores.^ In the eastern quarter of the city 
lived the Kshatriya or fighting caste, and skilled workmen 
whose occupation is not mentioned, together with merchants 
who dealt in scents and garlands, grain and liquids. The 
association of skilled craftsmen with Brahmans and Kshatriyas 
is additional evidence that craftsmanship did not always hold 
the inferior status in Indo-Aryan society which European 
writers have assumed to be the case. It was only occupations 
which were non- Aryan, or those which involved work offending 
against Aryan ideas of ritualistic purity, which were relegated 
to the Siidra or servile class. Kautiliya assigns the western 

1 Medicinal plants were cultivated in the imperial domains between the 
ordinary crops. 

76 




4- Northern Gateway of the Sanchi Stupa 



76 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

quarter of the city to Sudras, and with them were asso- 
ciated spinners of wool and cotton, mat-makers, and leather- 
workers. 

In the corners of the city were the headquarters of craft- 
guilds and co-operative societies. Other authorities on Indian 
town-planning tell us that the four corners of a town or village, 
away from the main routes of traffic, were the proper sites for 
schools, and no doubt the same position was given to the 
guild-halls on account of the educational purposes to which 
they were devoted. Co-operation was a principle upon which 
the whole organisation of Indo-Aryan society was based, so 
that the mention of artisan co-operative societies is not sur- 
prising. Another section of the Artha-Sdstra makes it a rule 
that a citizen or villager who sent his servants and bullocks 
to assist in co-operative work of any kind, in lieu of personal 
service, should take his share in the expense but have no 
claim to any of the profit. The organisation of these societies 
was applied to agriculture as well as to trade, handicraft, and 
fine arts such as music : each member contributed his share 
of the capital and, provided the rules were observed, was 
entitled to a corresponding share in the profits. As in the 
Middle Ages in Europe, it often happened that the formidable 
power acquired by these societies was not always used for the 
public advantage and called for the interference of the State. 

The four principal gates on the east, south, west, and north 
were dedicated to Brahma the Creator, Indra the Sky-god, 
Yama the I/ord of Death, and Senapati the War-god respec- 
tively. Outside the city walls, at a distance of a hundred 
bow-lengths from the moat, were rest-houses for pilgrims and 
travellers, and sacred groves and shrines. Heretics — a term 
applied at that time to Buddhists — and Chandalas, non-Aryan 
tribes at the lowest stage of civilisation, were required to 
live beyond the burial-grounds. It is significant that the 
stupa, or funeral-mound, became the most sacred symbol of 
Buddhism. 

The administrative Council of the city was modelled upon 
that of the village commutiities, and it may be assumed that, 

77 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

like the latter, it was an elected body, though certain matters 
were reserved for the control of imperial officials. It was 
composed of thirty members, divided into six committees of 
five. The first committee controlled the industries and handi- 
crafts of the city. The second one was in charge of arrange- 
ments for travellers and pilgrims visiting the city, providing 
them with accommodation and, when necessary, with food 
and medical attendance. Foreigners were kept under strict 
supervision. The officials in charge of rest-houses were 
instructed to question them and keep a register of information 
regarding them, to watch over their movements and to see 
that they were escorted when they left the country. When 
they were sick, travellers were attended to medically, and in 
the event of death they were buried and their property was 
taken care of so that it might be handed over to the relatives 
who were entitled to it. 

The third committee was charged with the registration of 
births and deaths, the statistics being considered necessary 
for Government schemes of taxation and other purposes. The 
fourth committee regulated the sales of produce, weights and 
measures, and issued licences to merchants. The fifth per- 
formed the same duties in regard to manufactures, and the 
sixth collected tithes on all goods sold in the city. The city 
Council also collectively administered general affairs, such as 
finance, sanitation, water-supply, the provision and upkeep 
of public buildings, fruit and flower gardens. The by-laws of 
the city imposed fines upon persons defiling public roads or 
reservoirs, or for allowing dead animals or human corpses 
to pollute public places. Special routes were prescribed for 
funeral processions, and no corpses were allowed to be buried 
or cremated except in the public cemeteries and cremation- 
grounds. In short, Pataliputra in the fourth century before 
Christ seems to have been a thoroughly well-organised city, 
and administered according to the best principles of social 
science. 

Pataliputra was mainly built of wood, because, as Megas- 
thenes explained, cities on the banks of the great rivers were 

78 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

not meant to be permanent, as the destruction caused by 
floods and by changes of the river-beds was so great. The 
houses were therefore built so that they could easily be removed 
when a change of site became necessary. But from the nature 
of the building material the risks of fire were as great as those 
of water. In Pataliputra a well was provided for every ten 
houses : no thatched houses were allowed in the city. Vessels 
filled with water were kept in rows along the main streets 
and public squares, and in front of the royal palace. Every 
householder had to keep ladders, axes, hooks, ropes, baskets, 
and leather bags, and in case of fire in a neighbour's house 
was required to run to his help — ^the fine for neglecting to do 
so being twelve panas. A fine of fifty-four panas was imposed 
upon those who set fire to a house through carelessness, while 
the penalty for arson was that the guilty person should be 
thrown into the fire. 

Among other affairs of civic life Kautillya provides for the 
regulation of the drink traffic and gambling. Brahmans were 
placed under severe penalties for indulging in liquor. Neither 
taverns nor gambling-halls were allowed in villages, and those 
in towns were limited in number and under strict supervision. 
The former had to be decently furnished and provided with 
scents, flowers, water, and " other comfortable things " accord- 
ing to the season, so that the lure of the drink should not 
be the only attraction. Inspectors, or ' spies,' stationed in 
the taverns took note of the habitues and ascertained whether 
they drank moderately or excessively. They also noted the 
value of the jewellery and other valuables in possession of 
customers who were intoxicated, for in the event of robbery 
the tavern-keeper had not only to make good the loss, but was 
liable to a fine of the same amount. 

Excessive gambling was a vice to which Aryan nobles and 
warriors had always been addicted. Chandragupta's Govern- 
ment tried to regulate it by a system of licensed gambling- 
halls and by forbidding gambling in the villages. The official 
superintendents of gambling supplied the dice and saw that 
the play was fair, Eive per cent, of the winnings was appro- 

79 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

priated by the State, and fees were levied for licences, use of 
dice, and hire of gambling-halls. 

The interest of Chandragupta's Government in the pros- 
perity of village life is evidenced by the minute attention given 
by Kautiliya to cattle-breeding and the care of stock. Accord- 
ing to Aryan tradition the land was the people's, but the raja, 
like the headman of a village or group of villages, was entitled 
to a certain proportion of the communal land as his share. 
The Crown domains included elephant forests and mining- 
ground, and agricultural land which was either leased out or 
cultivated by hired labour. The agricultural department super- 
intended the cultivation of these lands and collected the 
revenue from them. There were expert officials in charge 
of the imperial studs and herds of cattle and elephants, who 
attended to their feeding, protected them from thieves and 
wild animals, and rendered them veterinary aid. Kautiliya 
lays down rules for the feeding of stock ; the milking of cows 
and the standards of dairy produce ; the taming and training 
of bulls and elephants ; the engagement of cowherds, either 
on j&xed wages or on the principle of profit-sharing ; the 
management of the imperial stables ; the prevention of cruelty 
to animals and their protection from raiders and other dangers. 
Private owners were entitled to the services of departmental 
officials for the protection of their cattle on payment of a 
tithe of the produce. 

The administration of justice was carried out first by the 
village headmen and the local panchayats, which decided 
petty cases, and by two kinds of courts, inferior and superior, 
composed of six judges, which held their sessions in the villages 
and towns which formed the headquarters of different groups, 
districts, or provinces. In each court there were three judges 
learned in Indo-Aryan sacred literature and traditional law, 
and three experts in local customs and practical affairs. The 
inferior courts tried cases relating to contracts, recovery of 
debts, assault and defamation, thefts, boundary disputes, 
damage to crops, pastures, and public roads, domestic affairs, 
craft-guilds and co-operative societies, and miscellaneous cases. 
80 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

The higher courts dealt with the protection of craftsmen and 
merchants. The craft-guilds had their own courts for main- 
taining internal discipline, but craftsmen were considered to 
be under the special protection of the king, and it was a capital 
offence to maim one who was in the royal service so as to 
impair his working efficiency. Other matters within the juris- 
diction of these' higher courts were measures for dealing with 
famine and other national calamities. Kautiliya enters into 
details of the measures to be taken for famine protection. In 
the jfirst place it was ordained that half the stores in the State 
warehouses should always be kept in reserve for times of 
famine. When famine occurred the State distributed relief 
from this reserve, provided seed-grain for the next harvest, 
and started public works to keep the people remuneratively 
employed. The wealthy were called upon to subscribe for 
the relief of the poor, and when possible the population of the 
afflicted districts was removed to the banks of rivers, lakes, 
or to the seashore, or to places where crops were abundant. 

The maintenance of public morality and order, the trial 
of persons arrested on suspicion of robbery, inquests into 
cases of suspected murder and all cases in which capital 
punishment, with or without torture, was the penalty, were 
among those which were dealt with by the higher courts. 
The sovereign and his ministers, assisted by learned Brahmans, 
formed the final court of appeal. Punishment for offences 
ranged from small fines to mutilation, torture, or death. The 
lex talionis was often applied. Torture could be used to elicit 
confession under certain circumstances, as in cases of robbery 
when the accused could not give a satisfactory account of his 
proceedings on the previous day. Capital crimes included 
wilful damage to a sacred tree, evasion of royal taxes, and 
intrusion upon the royal hunt. It is noteworthy that under 
Chandragupta's rule Brahmans were not exempt from heavy 
punishment.^ 

The supreme control of the administration not only of 
justice, but of all affairs of State, was vested in the King of 

^ See ante, p. 69. 

F 81 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Kings, Chandragupta, and his Council, of which no doubt 
Chanakya was the President, or Pradhdna. Bight seems to 
have been the usual number of a royal council, but it varied 
from time to time, and in Chandragupta's great empire it was 
probably larger as the duties of the Council were onerous. 
Individually each member, assisted by two under-secretaries, 
was in charge of a State department. Collectively the Council 
met to discuss departmental finances, foreign affairs, and all 
other important matters, sometimes with, sometimes without 
the presence of the sovereign. They appointed provincial 
governors, departmental chiefs, and all the highest officers of 
State. The Council generally initiated all important business, 
the opinion of absent members being given in writing. The 
resolutions of the Council were signed and sealed by each 
member in order of precedence. Megasthenes testified to the 
" high character and wisdom " of Chandragupta's councillors 
and to the power they held in the State. Chandragupta's rule 
was not the undiluted despotism of an absolute monarchy, 
but a constitutional government formed after the ancient 
Aryan tradition of empire, in which, theoretically at least, 
the people's right was the only source of the divine right of 
kings. This principle was asserted in the oath which every 
Indo-Aryan king took at the religious ceremony in which he 
received royal authority from the people's hands : " May I 
be deprived of heaven, of life, and of offspring if I oppress 
you." 1 

According to the same tradition the king's duties and daily 
routine of work were clearly defined. Bvery twenty-four hours 
was to be divided into sixteen ndlikds, or periods of about 
one and a half hours. The first nalika of the day was to be 
given to the State finances and consideration of national defence. 
In the second the king was to attend to the petitions and suits 
of his subjects. The third was the time for bathing, dining, 
and religious study. In the fourth he received payments for 
the royal treasury and made official appointments. The fifth 

* Aitareya Brahmana, vol. viii, 4.1. 15. See " Introduction to Hindu Polity," 
by Kashiprasad Jayaswal, Modern Review, Calcutta, July 1913. 
82 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

was devoted to Council business and to receiving the reports 
of spies ; the sixth to relaxation and prayer ; the seventh 
and eighth to military matters. In the first nalika of the 
night he again received reports from officers of the secret 
service ; the second was given to the evening bath, repast, and 
study ; the third, fourth, and fifth were the hours for sleep. 
In the sixth he arose, prepared himself for the coming day 
by meditation, and was received by his bodyguard of female 
archers. The seventh was given to the study of public affairs 
and to issuing orders to his secret agents. In the eighth he 
went into the private audience hall, where he received the 
blessings of his guru and other Brahmans of the court and 
met his councillors and the royal princes. Some religious 
ceremonies were then performed, and after consultation with 
the court astrologer, physician, and head cook, the day's work 
began. In the reign of Chandragupta's grandson Asoka, we 
learn that a water-clock at the great university of Nalanda 
gave time for the whole of Magadha. 

The function of the secret agents, who according to estab- 
lished tradition were part of the machinery of government, 
combined that of the modern journalist, inspecting official, 
police detective, and military spy. They were to keep the 
Government informed of the state of public opinion, to report 
confidentially upon the working of departmental administra- 
tions, to impose a check upon the arbitrary conduct of State 
officials, to assist in the detection of crime, as well as to frustrate 
seditious movements and to discover the designs of an enemy 
country. " A king worthy of praise," says the Sukrd-nitisdra, 
apropos of spies, " should always learn his own faults from his 
subjects' point of view and get rid of them, but never punish 
the people " (chap, i, p. 265). In principle, at least, the ancient 
spy system had much to recommend it and stood on a far higher 
moral plane than that of the present day, Greek accounts 
which bear witness to Indian honesty and veracity declare 
that Chandragupta was well served by his secret agents and 
that their reports could always be considered trustworthy, 

Greek writers also give some glimpses of the life of Chandra- 

83 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

gupta, borrowed from Megasthenes' descriptions. The drastic 
measures taken for the consolidation of the Empire must have 
made the Mauryan dynasty many enemies, and for fear of 
attempts against his life Chandragupta is said to have changed 
his bedroom every night. The fact that he refrained from 
sleeping in the daytime need not have been attributed to the 
same cause, for it only proved that he observed the rules of 
morality laid down in Brahmanical law-books. When the 
Emperor rode abroad it was a capital offence to approach close 
to the bodyguard of female archers which protected his person. 
In the city he was sometimes carried in a palanquin of gold 
festooned with pearls, but on his travels Chandragupta rode 
either on horseback or on an elephant magnificently caparisoned. 
When he sat in the public audience hall of the palace, clothed 
* in purple and fine linen,' to hear the petitions and appeals of 
his subjects, four attendants massaged his limbs with ebony 
rollers. One of the most splendid of the court functions was 
the celebration of the Emperor's birthday, when, according to 
an ancient Aryan custom, his hair was washed in the presence 
of the court, and the attendant princes and nobles of the 
Empire brought rich presents to their sovereign. Displays 
of arms of Kshatriya chivalry ; rhinoceros, elephant, ram, 
and bull fights ; chariot-racing with horses and oxen yoked 
together, and hunting, were the principal amusements of the 
court. 

Both Chandragupta and his minister Chanakya are said 
to have favoured the followers of Mahavira,i who, though 
unorthodox in the Brahmanical sense, did not make so wide 
a breach in the Vedic tradition by disputing the existence of 
the soul, a sin for which the Buddhists in Chandragupta's time 
seem to have been classed as heretics and placed outside the 
Aryan pale. But it does not follow that Chandragupta was 
himself of the Jain persuasion because he bestowed imperial 
bounty upon Mahavira's followers, for it was the recognised 
duty of an Indo-Aryan monarch to be generous towards all 
religious devotees, even the unorthodox, provided that their 
^ U. D. Barodia, History and Literature of Jainism. 

84 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

doctrines did not subvert the whole foundation of Aryan 
religion. 

The imperial revenue was derived from many sources. 
Besides the ordinary tax of one-sixth of the produce of com- 
munal lands or of fisheries, which was the raja's due according 
to the oldest Aryan tradition, there was the revenue from the 
Crown domains ; from the working and leasing of mines, 
pearl fisheries and salt manufacture, which were State mono- 
polies ; the hire of Government ships and boats ; irrigation 
assessments ; tolls on merchandise ; taxes on liquor and 
gambling-houses ; fees for passports and for testing weights 
and measures ; and fines imposed for various offences. 

The system of collecting the land revenue followed the 
organisation of the village communities previously described. 
The headman, or gopa (lit. cowherd), of each of the smaller 
groups of villages was responsible for keeping a register of 
householders and their lands, which gave their occupations, 
caste, income, and property in servants and live-stock, and 
the amount of the tax payable, whether in money or kind, if 
they were not exempt from taxation, or the State service for 
which they were liable in lieu of taxes. The sthdnlka, or 
mayor, of the district towns had under him a staff of revenue 
officials who performed similar duties for the larger groups 
of villages and townships ; while a higher officer acted in the 
same way as revenue-collector for the fortified provincial 
capitals, the State mines, gardens and forests, and for the 
tolls on traffic. A Collector of Customs was posted at the 
gates of fortified towns with an office staff to register the 
merchants and their goods which passed through and to 
examine passports. The markets were just inside the gates, 
and the duties were levied only on the actual sales. Certain 
kinds of goods, such as arms and armour, metals, vehicles, 
grain, live-stock, and precious stones, were exempt from duty 
and were therefore offered for sale outside the gates. No 
duty was levied on articles intended for religious purposes or 
for marriage festivals, or on presents for the king. Government 
stores, and anything to be used for women in childbirth. 

85 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Double duty was charged to a mercliant coming without a 
pass, and eight times the amount if the pass was found to be 
forged, while very heavy fines were imposed for smuggling. 

The revenue received from these recognised sources was 
not always sufficient for the State expenditure, and Chandra- 
gupta and his ministers were sometimes driven to various 
financial shifts to meet great emergencies — one of which, no 
doubt, was the defence of the realm against Seleukos' invasion. 
Thus it is said that special appeals were made for the people's 
' benevolences ' to replenish the State finances, that the rich 
stores of gold in the temple treasuries were drawn upon, 
and that eight hundred million debased silver coins were issued 
from the imperial mint ; but though Kautiliya proposes various 
extraordinary and irregular means of raising revenue, there is 
no suggestion that such measures lay within the divine right of 
kings, or were justified by any circumstances save the common 
weal and grave dangers threatening the existence of the 
State. 

If Chandragupta's hand lay heavy upon his subjects, there 
is no evidence except that of prejudiced Greek writers that his 
government was deliberately oppressive. His justification lay 
in his success in freeing Aryavarta from the Macedonian yoke, 
an autocracy which would have been far less tender with the 
rights of Aryan freemen. Popular legends represent him as 
the Indian King Alfred who in the face of great difficulties 
struggled successfully to free his country from the vicious 
rule of the Nanda kings and from the yoke of the foreign 
invader. Chanakya was ugly and deformed, but an accom- 
plished scholar and a great statesman, who served his master 
faithfully with the wisdom of a serpent, which prevailed over 
all the wiles of his enemies and made the Magadhan Empire 
the greatest and most glorious Aryavarta had ever known. 

The organisation of Chandragupta's army followed the 
Indo- Aryan tradition of warfare. After his succession to the 
throne of Magadha it is said to have numbered six hundred 
thousand infantry, swordsmen, and archers ; thirty thousand 
cavalry; over eight thousand chariots drawn by two or four 
86 



THE MAURYAN EMPIRE 

horses and holding two warriors each; and nine thousand 
elephants each seating three bowmen. Chandragupta had also 
an effective navy, the details of which are not recorded, though 
Kautiliya mentions ocean-going ships as well as vessels for 
coast and river service. The administration of the army and 
navy was, like that of the imperial capital, under a commission 
of thirty members divided into six panchayats, or councils of 
five. The first controlled the navy ; the second the army trans- 
port and commissariat services; the third the infantry; the 
fourth the cavalry ; the fifth the war-chariots ; and the sixth 
the elephant force. 

Chandragupta reigned twenty-four years and died in 296 B.C., 
probably before the age of fifty. He left to his son Bindusara 
a great and powerful empire which kept the foreign invader 
at bay for a century after his death. Bindusara, while he was 
Yuva-rdja, or Crown Prince, had no doubt been trained in the 
art of war and, according to Aryan custom, taken a leading 
part in the proceedings of the imperial Council — his place 
being after that of the Purohita, the Royal Chaplain or highest 
lyord Spiritual. He was thus well qualified to carry on his 
father's poUcy, both in military and civil matters, and to 
maintain the respect which the Mauryan dynasty had won 
both at home and abroad. But so far as is known his reign 
of twenty-five years was uneventful and he left no mark of a 
strong personality upon the records of the time, unless the 
extension of the Mauryan Empire in a southerly direction to 
the latitude of Madras, so as to include the whole of the Dekhan, 
is to be attributed to him, as Mr Vincent Smith believes. 

Beyond this the only known events of his reign are the 
despatch by Antiochos, Seleukos' son and successor, of a new 
embassy, headed by Deimachos, to represent him at the court 
of Pataliputra instead of the one of which Megasthenes was 
the leader ; and of a similar one by the ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, of which Dionysios was the chief. The latter, 
like Megasthenes, left written accounts of his impressions of 
India. We need not infer that these diplomatic missions 
marked the beginning of a close intercourse between India, 

87 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Mesopotamia, and|Egypt, but only that tlie prestige of the 
Mauryan dynasty was so great that the Western Powers thought 
it worth while to recognise it. A sidelight is thrown on Bindu- 
sara's personal interests by a letter he is said to have written 
to Antiochos requesting that among the usual presents to be 
brought by the Greek ambassador should be included figs 
and raisin wine, adding confidentially that for a real Greek 
philosopher he was willing to pay a high price. Antiochos 
politely refused to make a bargain on the ground that his 
philosophers were not for sale, but even so slight an incident 
shows that there was both intellectual and commercial inter- 
course between Bast and West at a time when Aryan interests 
in both continents were similar. The fact is also worth noting 
that Asoka's father had a philosophical bent of mind. 



88 



CHAPTER VI 

ASOKA 

IF the foundation of the Mauryan dynasty by Chandra- 
gupta was the culminating-point of Aryan political 
supremacy in India, the accession of his grandson, 
Asoka, about 268 B.C., and his subsequent proclamations 
of the Dharma of the Enlightened One as the law of the 
land, must be taken to mark the final breaking down of the 
racial barriers between Aryan and non- Aryan, and the beginning 
of the history of India as distinguished from that of Aryavarta. 
The process had doubtless been a gradual and continuous 
one for many centuries before that time, but Asoka did for 
Buddhism in the Bast what Constantine did for Christianity 
in the West ; he gave a sect which, though already prosperous, 
was subject to much contumely and opposition the prestige 
of imperial patronage and used the whole organisation of 
the State to propagate its doctrines. Of the success of the 
Buddha's teaching and the fortunes of his followers in the 
two and a quarter centuries which elapsed from the time of 
the Pari-Nirvana in 483 B.C. until Asoka became a lay disciple 
very little is known. But there is good reason to suppose 
that in spite of the hostility of the Brahmans to the heretical 
doctrines, the teaching of the Kshatriya Prince had obtained 
powerful support from some of the ruling rajas. Ajatasatru, 
King of Magadha, the founder of Pataliputra, was one of those 
who had patronised the Buddhist Sangha and built a stupa 
over relics of the saint. It is also possible that through royal 
influence his philosophical system had found a recognised place 
in the centres of Aryan learning, and that the wandering 
bhikkus trained in the Buddhist schools to preach the Eight- 
fold Path had won many adherents among the lower ranks of 

89 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the village population. The success of Jain ascetics in opposing 
the pretensions of orthodox Brahmanism would also have 
reacted in favour of the Buddha's teaching. Thus though in 
some localities the Buddhists may have been treated as heretics 
and compelled to live outside the Aryan pale, in others the 
Sangha had probably become a powerful political organisation 
which even the Brahmans were compelled to respect. 

Asoka in his father's lifetime had served as governor both 
of the north-western province, of which Taksha-sila, Chanakya's 
Alma Mater, was the capital, and of Western India, the capital 
of which was Ujjain, another great centre of Aryan culture, 
as renowned for its astronomical schools as Taksha-sila was 
for its teaching of medicine. In his father's court and in 
these famous universities he had doubtless learnt all the 
accomplishments of a Kshatriya prince, which included at 
least a superficial knowledge of some of the current systems 
of Aryan philosophy. But as a young man his main pre- 
occupation was the art of war, and it is supposed that his 
succession was not a peaceful one and that his right to the 
throne was disputed by an elder brother who may have been 
passed over in his father's settlement of the Yuva-rdj. Accord- 
ing to Aryan law the reigning monarch chose the fittest among 
his nearest relatives or sons as the heir to the throne : the eldest 
son had no prescriptive right by birth alone. 

The ceremony of coronation, or royal consecration,^ by which 
Asoka was formally confirmed as sovereign ruler of Aryavarta, 
* beloved of the Devas/ was not celebrated until four years 
after his accession. His famous edicts were dated from the 
year of his consecration, as, according to Aryan law, the 
monarch before that ceremony is performed is only, as it 
were, on probation. These edicts, or proclamations inscribed 
on magnificently wrought stone pillars representing the imperial 
standards, or carved in the living rock, furm'sh the most reliable 
data of the events of Asoka's reign. Thirty-four have been 
discovered, some of them only recording the visits paid by 
Asoka to the holy places of Buddhism, others dedicating 

1 Abhisheka, lit. sprinkling over (with Ganges water). 
90 



A S O K A 

hermitages for the use of the Ajivikas, a certain sect related 
to the Jains upon which imperial patronage was bestowed. 
The rest are admonitions to the State officials and the members 
of the Order, issued for the benefit of Asoka's subjects in the 
outlying provinces of his dominions, setting forth the essence 
of the Dharma as preached by the Buddha in words apparently 
dictated by the Emperor himself. 

From these contemporary records we learn that in the 
ninth year of his reign (256 B.C.), or the thirteenth from the 
date of his accession, Asoka entered upon the conquest of 
Kalinga, the powerful kingdom of the east coast lying between 
the rivers Mahanadi and the Godavari and Krishna. In this 
successful campaign, which ended with Kalinga becoming 
a new province of the Magadhan Empire, it is stated {Rock 
Edict XIII) that one hundred thousand people were slain, one 
hundred and fifty thousand carried away as prisoners, and that 
vast numbers of non-combatants perished. Asoka expresses 
his profound sorrow not only for the slaughter of fighting men 
and the misery of prisoners of war, but for the Brahmans and 
pious men of all sects and for householders within the Aryan 
pale, " their friends, acquaintances, comrades, and relatives," 
who had suifered all the cruel consequences of war — " violence, 
slaughter, and separation from those whom they love. " " Even 
upon the forest tribes," continues the proclamation, " His 
Majesty has compassion and he seeks their conversion, inas- 
much as the might even of His Majesty is based on repentance." ^ 
The proclamation concludes with the declaration that in his 
Majesty's opinion the only true conquest lies in the conquest of 
self (by the Dharma) — a maxim which finds a parallel in Bhima's 
recital of kingly virtues in the Mahabharata : "A king should 
first subdue himself and then seek to subdue his foes. How 
should a king who has not been able to conquer his own self 
be able to conquer his foes ? " {Santi Parva, Sect. lyXIX, 4). 

According to tradition the Buddhist monk who won the 
Emperor as a lay disciple and afterwards induced him to 
become one of the Order was Upagupta, mentioned in other 
* For a full translation of the edict see Vincent Smith's Asoka, pp. 129-133. 

91 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

inscriptions as having accompanied Asoka on his State pil- 
grimages to the holy places of Buddhism. The successive 
proclamations record the gradually increasing zeal of Asoka 
for the propagation of the Buddhist faith. For two and a 
half years he was content with being a lay disciple, but 
in the eleventh year of his reign he entered upon the Aryan 
Eightfold Path, or, in other words, was ordained as a member 
of the Buddhist Sangha. In the inscription recording the 
fact [Edict VIII) he lays out for himself the royal Path along 
which a follower of the Sakya Prince should go — pilgrimages 
devoted to works of piety ; reverence and liberality to ascetics 
and Brahmans ; reverence to elders ; the welfare of the 
country and people ; the proclamation of the Dharma and 
the explanation of it. These State pilgrimages were ordered 
to take the place of the royal hunting parties which had been 
the traditional amusements of Aryan nobility. The slaughter 
of animals for sacrifice was forbidden at Pataliputra, the 
number of public festivals being restricted so that the order 
might be the more easily enforced. To set a good example, 
no animal food was served at the imperial court. 

The duties of the central Government with regard to the 
planting of avenues and fruit-gardens, the building of rest- 
houses, the digging of wells along the public roads, the provision 
of medical aid, and the cultivation and distribution of medi- 
cinal plants were not only insisted upon, but animals are 
specially mentioned as being entitled to these benefits as 
much as human beings. To ensure that the appeals and 
petitions of his subjects were promptly heard and that public 
grievances were redressed without delay, Asoka gave orders 
that there should be no fixed time for attending to such 
business as heretofore, but that " at all times and in all places, 
whether I am dining or in the ladies' apartments, in my 
bedroom or in my closet, in my carriage or in the palace 
gardens, the official reporters should keep me constantly 
informed of the people's business, which business of the people 
I am ready to dispose of at any place" [Rock Edict VI).^ And 

* Vincent Smith's Asoka, p. 122. 
92 



ASOKA 

further, if any difficulty should arise in the bestowal of 
the imperial bounty or in the execution of orders, through 
disputes arising in the agency entrusted with them (the 
Parishat), it was commanded that immediate report should 
be made to the Emperor " at any hour and at any place," for, 
says Asoka, "work I must for the commonweal." 

Asoka also issued instructions for the guidance of the State 
officials who supervised the administration of towns, districts, 
and provinces. They were enjoined to regard all men as the 
Emperor's children, whose happiness in this world and the 
next was his chief desire. They were warned to be careful 
in their conduct, for those who neglected their duty would 
gain neither the favour of Heaven nor of the Emperor. They 
were to prevent false imprisonment, the unjustifiable torture 
of citizens, and any acts of violence. In their behaviour they 
must avoid envy, harshness, impatience, idleness, and lack 
of perseverance — faults which prevented them from being 
useful State officials. And that these orders might be under- 
stood by the people, Asoka gave directions that they should 
be read regularly at public festivals and at the provincial 
assemblies, which were to be held every three or five years 
{Provincial Edict No. i, detached Edict). 

To the people themselves Asoka addressed numerous edicts 
calling on them to observe the precepts which the Departed 
One had proclaimed as unalterable and true, and to join 
in their sovereign ruler's efforts to establish the Dharma, 
" because even the small man can, if he choose, by exertion 
win for himself much heavenly bliss." This was the Dharma, 
the Law of Good Living, by devotion to which every one 
might gain peace of mind, joy in this life and in the life here- 
after. The clergy were enjoined to read attentively the 
Good Law and to meditate upon it, so that the laity, male and 
female, might be persuaded to do the same. Parents should 
be obeyed ; the teacher must be reverenced by the pupil ; 
truth must be spoken ; no living thing should be sacrificed 
or injured ; disputes should be avoided, personal indulgence 
restricted ; but generosity to friends, acquaintances, relatives, 

93 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Brahmans, and pious men were to be encouraged. Those who 
were too poor to give lavishly could fulfil the Good Law by- 
cultivating self-control, purity of thought, gratitude, and 
fidelity. Charity must be practised, ceremonies had to be 
performed, but there was no charity like the gift of the Dharma, 
and the only ceremony that would bear good fruit was that 
which included kind treatment of slaves and servants, respect 
for teachers and for the sacredness of life, and liberality to 
religious devotees and Brahmans. 

" The ceremony of the Dharma is not temporal ; if it fails 
to attain the desired end in this world, it surely begets eternal 
merit in the other world." But a man must reverence all 
sects and never think that he honours his own by disparaging 
that of another man for trivial reasons. " All sects deserve 
reverence for one reason or another. By thus acting a man 
exalts his own sect, and at the same time does service to the 
sects of other people " {Edict XII). " His Majesty cares not 
so much for donations or external reverence as that there 
should be a growth of the essence of the matter in all sects." 

By a special edict issued in the twenty-seventh year of his 
reign Asoka made regulations for the protection of birds and 
animals and other living things. Some were scheduled as 
exempt from slaughter, including parrots, adjutant birds, 
Brahmani ducks, grey doves, village pigeons, geese, Brahmani 
bulls, stags, rhinoceroses, squirrels, flying-foxes, lizards, tortoises, 
prawns, and queen-ants ; also she-goats, ewes, and sows with 
young or in milk and their young up to six months, and all 
four-footed animals which were not eaten or otherwise used 
by man. Forests were not to be burnt, not even chaff " con- 
taining living things," and the living were not to be fed with 
the living. On certain days fish were not to be caught or 
sold, and no animals living in elephant preserves or fish- 
ponds were to be destroyed. At other times the branding of 
horses and oxen and the castration of cattle were forbidden. 

Though Asoka was thus solicitous for the welfare of all 
living beings, in the case of criminals he apparently did little 
to relax the severity of Aryan law, but used its machinery to. 

94 



ASOKA 

the fullest extent for maintaining good conduct according to 
the teaching of the Buddha. Capital punishment and the 
torture of prisoners to elicit confession were not abolished. 
He only endeavoured to secure the just administration of the 
law, and in the case of criminals condemned to death ordered 
a respite of three days, in which time their relatives could 
endeavour to win their repentance, so that " even during their 
imprisonment they may gain the next world." 

But " in order to see that justice was done and to minister 
to the spiritual and temporal needs of his subjects" Asoka 
appointed special officers, censors or monitors of the Dharma, 
whose duties were to prevent wrongful imprisonment or 
punishment, to remove hindrances from the path of the faithful, 
to help parents with large f amihes and others in distress through 
misfortune or old age. They were entrusted with the dis- 
tribution of the imperial bounty and with the supervision 
of various charitable institutions. Their jurisdiction even 
included the affairs of the Sangha and of all religious orders, 
Brahman, Jain, and others. They were likewise charged with 
the superintendence of the female establishments of members 
of the imperial family residing at Pataliputra and some of the 
provincial capitals. 

Nor was Asoka's zeal for the advancement of the Dharma 
limited by the boundaries of his great empire. The indepen- 
dent tribes beyond his borders were also to be taught the 
iGood I^aw. He dispatched medical missions to Ceylon and 
ito the Chola, Pandya, Satiyaputra, and Keralaputra kingdoms 
iof Southern India with remedies for man and beast, and used 
his diplomatic connections with Antiochos of Syria, Ptolemy 
Philadelphus of Egypt, and the kings of Macedonia, Epirus, 
and Cyrene to spread the wisdom of the Enlightened One. 

According to the Sinhalese tradition the most important 
and successful of these missions was one headed by Mahendra, 
one of Asoka's brothers, who had followed his example by 
joining the Order. It seems to have begun work by estab- 
ishing a monastic centre in Southern India, from whence 
Mahendra is said to have passed into Ceylon and to have 

95 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

quickly won as converts the king Tissa and the whole of his 
court. 

Mahendra, according to the same tradition, was afterwards 
joined by his sister Sangliamitra, who brought with her a 
branch of the sacred Bo Tree from Bodh-Gaya, and with the 
help of the Princess Anula founded the first Buddhist nunnery 
in the island, while Mahendra devoted himself to organising 
the male members of the Sangha. Both these royal mis- 
sionaries are believed to have spent the rest of their lives in 
the island, and the great stupa at Mihintale is pointed out 
as the memorial containing Mahendra's ashes. The legends 
associating Asoka's brother and sister with the Ceylon mission 
are interwoven with many miraculous incidents, and some 
Oriental scholars regard them as entirely fictitious, but the 
story of the Bo Tree is represented on the sculptures of Sanchi, 
which are very close to Asoka's time, and there is no doubt 
that the conversion of Ceylon to Buddhism was due to Asoka's 
missionary efforts. 

Tradition also is the sole authority for the statement that 
Asoka in the eighteenth year of his reign summoned a General 
Assembly or Council of the Sangha to Pataliputra for the 
purpose of eradicating heresy, to clear up disputed points of 
doctrine, and to enforce rules of discipline among members 
of the fraternity. Several of the rock edicts prove that matters 
of this kind did — as might be expected from such a zealous 
and indefatigable member of the Sangha — receive his atten- 
tion, and the fact that no references to the Council of Patali- 
putra are made on the Asokan inscriptions so far discovered 
in no way renders it improbable that the Emperor adopted 
this traditional Indian method of dealing with such questions, 
though the year of the Council's meeting is uncertain. 

The course of the State pilgrimages which Asoka instituted, 
in place of royal hunting-parties, and the holy places of Bud- | 
dhism which he visited were marked by memorials in the 
form of imperial standards {dhwaja-stamhhas), splendidly ■ 
wrought in stone and inscribed with Asoka's edicts or inscrip- 
tions recording the Emperor's visit. Many of these still exist 

96 




5- Capita!, of Asoka's Pii,i,ar at Sarnath 96 



ASOKA 

in a more or less perfect conditian. The picturesque tradi- 
tional account of his grand tour states that on the advice 
of his ministers Asoka sent for Upagupta to act as his guide. 
The great abbot came from his forest retreat near Mathura, 
travelling by boat down the Jumna and Ganges with eighteen 
thousand members of the Order as companions. At Patali- 
putra they joined the Emperor's suite, and with a splendid 
military escort the imperial procession started for the lyUmbini 
Garden. There, as Asoka's inscribed standard still records, 
Upagupta pointed to the Buddha's birthplace, saying, " Here, 
Great King, the Venerable One was born. Here was the first 
memorial consecrated to the Enlightened One ; and here, 
immediately after His birth, the Saint took seven steps upon 
the ground." Asoka then did reverence to the holy place, 
ordered an imperial standard to be set up there, distributed 
largesse of gold, and made the village free of State taxes for 
ever. Kapilavastu, the scene of the great Renunciation, was 
the next place visited, then the Bodhi Tree at Gaya under 
which the Sakya Prince attained Nirvana. There Asoka built 
a shrine, probably similar to the one which now exists at the 
place, and lavished alms upon the crowds of mendicants — a 
hundred thousand gold pieces, so the story goes. Then the 
great procession passed on to Sarnath, the Deer Park or sacred 
grove in which the Buddha first proclaimed the Dharma, or 
" turned the Wheel of the Law" ; and next to Sravasti, the 
monastery where the Saint lived and taught. Then to Kusi- 
nagara, where He passed away or reached the goal of Pari- 
Nirv'^ana. 

At Sravasti Asoka did reverence to the stupas of the Buddha's 
disciples. At the stupa of Ananda, the most devoted and 
beloved, he gave, it is said, largesse of a million pieces of 
gold, but at that of Vakkula only a single copper coin, for 
Vakkula had not striven greatly in the Eightfold Path nor 
had he done much to help his fellow-creatures. 

From time to time Asoka recorded with satisfaction the 
progress which the Dharma was making, not only in his own 
dominions but in foreign lands. The gods who at one time 

G 97 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

were regarded as true gods had now, he wrote, become untrue 
gods. " Owing to my instructions this yearning for and 
devotion to the Dharma have grown up from day to day and 
will continue to grow " [Pillar Edict I). Yet it is interesting 
to note that, like the Buddha himself, he did not claim to be 
preaching any new doctrine, but " the ancient standard of 
good living which leads to length of days." " The kings who 
had ruled the land before him had desired that men should 
live according to the Dharma, but had failed to persuade them. 
He himself, both by personal example and by State measures, 
had induced men to obey the lyaw, and now the Dharma 
was growing and was increased in strength by obedience to 
father and mother, obedience to teachers, reverence to the 
aged, and kindly treatment of Brahmans and ascetics, of the 
poor and wretched, yea, even of slaves and servants " [Pillar 
Edict VII).'^ There was greater piety among men, cruelty to 
animate creatures had diminished, there was less slaughter of 
living beings, while even in the lands outside the empire, 
" where the Greek king named Antiochos dwells, and be- 
yond that Antiochos, to where dwell the four kings named 
Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas, and Alexander [i.e. the kings of 
Egypt, Macedonia, Bpirus, and Cyrene], and in the south 
the kings of the Cholas and the Pandyas, and of Ceylon . . . 
everywhere men follow the Dharma as proclaimed by His 
Majesty " [Edict XIII).^ 

There was probably less exaggeration in Asoka's summary of 
his own life's work than is usually found in royal proclama- 
tions. He was using the whole organisation of a great empire — 
and a very perfect one — which in the hands of Chandragupta 
and Chanakya had been so powerful as a political and economic 
machine, not for oppression or extortion, but solely for the 
education of the masses. And if he exercised his authority 
in an autocratic manner hardly in consonance with Aryan 
traditions of kingship, there is every probability that he had 
behind him the enthusiastic support of the great majority of 
his subjects. The times were ripe for a great democratic 
* Vincent Smith, Asoka, p. 156. ^ JUd., p. 156. 

98 



ASOKA 

movement in religious ttiought. The Aryan pale included so 
many of non-Aryan race that the monopoly in spiritual 
leadership which the twice-born classes asserted could no 
longer be maintained. Though the intellectual impulse came 
from the great minds of the Aryan aristocracy in both cases. 
Buddhism and Jainism were essentially democratic move- 
ments, and Asoka in putting himself at the head of the one 
and extending State patronage to the other made himself a 
great popular leader, while he disarmed the hostility of the 
Brahman priesthood by his tolerant attitude towards all 
religious sects. 

It is significant also of the subtle influence which Brah- 
manical thought was already beginning to have upon Buddhist 
doctrine — an influence which was destined to modify profoundly 
its whole philosophical basis — ^that Asoka in his edicts con- 
stantly refers to the bliss of the life hereafter as the reward 
of good living — ^the goal to which the pious strive to reach is 
' heaven ' {swarga), not Nirvana. " His Majesty thinks nothing 
of much importance save that which concerns the next world." 
He often cites the Buddha, the Venerable One, as the authority 
for his ethical precepts, but the interpretation of the Good 
and Ancient I^aw is given as his own : "I have appointed 
officers among the people to expound and extend my teaching." 
In making the moral law the guiding principle of life — a law 
transcending ethical rules which bound human society — 
instead of the Brahman law of sacrifice, which was a non- 
moral law, Asoka was reaffirming the Buddha's teaching and 
also, in a sense, going back to the principles of the Vedic 
seers who made the efficacy of the sacrifice contingent on the 
moral virtues of the sacrificer. But in laying so much stress 
upon the reward of virtue in the next world as the highest 
incentive for human energy in this Asoka was unconsciously 
shifting the Buddhist logical position towards that compromise 
with Brahmanism which eventually made the Buddha the 
Supreme Deity, the Creator Himself, ruling over the Devas 
whose influence upon the destinies of mankind he himself had 
denied. 

99 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

But no doubt Asoka in his edicts intentionally popularised 
the Buddha's teaching to make it more comprehensible to the 
uneducated masses to whom they were addressed. He care- 
fully avoided any metaphysical arguments which the learned 
Brahman might try to controvert. The order for Brahman, 
Sudra, and for those outside the Aryan pale was the same : 
" Strive to do good to all creatures — that is sufficient for your 
salvation in this world and the next." In thus making the 
supreme power of the State identical with the moral law 
Asoka' s reign was not only one of the greatest epochs of 
Indian culture, but a conspicuous landmark in the history of 
civilisation. And there is no reason to question Asoka's claim 
that the effect of his missionary zeal was felt far beyond the 
borders of his own dominions. Recent archaeological research 
has discovered evidence of the presence of Asoka's missionaries 
in Egypt, and as no religion can be explained or understood as 
a disconnected fact in the process of man's spiritual develop- 
ment, it is more than justifiable to conclude that the Buddhist 
missions established by Asoka prepared the soil from which 
both Christianity and Islam afterwards sprang. 

In India itself Asoka's propaganda, apart from its effect 
in breaking down racial barriers and making India a nation, 
had the most far-reaching social and cultural influence. The 
Kshatriya and Brahman aristocracy had been meat-eaters and 
addicted to strong drink — ^the intoxicating soma juice which 
represented the nectar of the gods. There is little to show 
how far the habits of the ancient Aryans had been changed 
in this respect by their Indian environment before Asoka's 
time, but the powerful influence of a highly centralised govern- 
ment during a period of thirty-eight years and the restriction 
of the slaughter of animals must have done much to form the 
tradition of vegetarian food and non-alcoholic drinking which 
became the rtile of the upper classes in Hindu society. And 
the predominance of Buddhist thought in the universities of 
the land must have had an equal influence in substituting 
scientific investigation of cause and effect for a blind acceptance 
of scriptural authority. 

100 



ASOKA 

At the same time Buddhism as a social and political creed 
contained within itself elements of weakness which after 
Asoka's death led quickly to the break-up of the Mauryan 
Empire. The pious inclination of an impressionable people to 
imitate the example of the Great Renunciation had such an 
injurious effect upon social order that penalties were imposed 
upon any man leaving his wife and family without adequate 
provision for their support, and the prestige of the Sangha 
withdrew the best part of the manhood of Magadha — the 
central province of the empire — into a monastic life, so that in 
after times it was known as Vihdra, 'the I^and of Monasteries.' 
Moreover, Buddhist scholastic teaching speedily became infected 
with the same intellectual vice which it had set out to combat — 
the reference of every rule of life to scriptural authority, in 
thi« case to the word of the Blessed One. The members of the 
Sangha were bound to the observance of a set of rules as 
stringent and meticulous as those of the Brahmans. The 
Vindya texts refer all the minutiae of personal hygiene and 
the organisation of the work of the Sangha not, as the Buddha 
himself would have done, to natural laws of sound health 
and self-discipline, but solely to the command of the Blessed 
One. If the floor of the monastery was to be swept and kept 
clean it was only because the Buddha had so commanded. 
The Blessed One Himself had prescribed that the Sangha's 
permission should be asked for having new-coming bhikkus 
shaved — so it must be done. The Buddha had shown how 
the monasteries were to be built ; what kind of bowls were 
to be used ; how they were to be carried ; where needles, 
scissors, and thimbles were to be kept, etc. — and there was 
no other way. 

The Master's message to the world — ^that to worship Good 
was to worship God, and that good living, the Dharma, led 
to emancipation from all the ills which afflict mankind, as 
effect follows cause and water quenches fire — ^was preached 
assiduously by the Buddhist missionaries whom Asoka sent 
north, south, east, and west ; but the standard of conduct 
set up by the Sangha itself did not reach to the high ideal 

lOI 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

of its founders and the obscurantism with which the Brahman 
priesthood had darkened the teaching of the Vedic seers 
entered into the monasteries and nunneries of Buddhism. 
Already in Asoka's time it is evident that the immense stimulus 
given to Buddhist propaganda by imperial patronage tended 
towards the development of a ritual hardly less extravagant 
than the Brahmanical sacrifices it superseded. The forms and 
ceremonies of rehc-worship were substituted for those of the 
sacrificial altar, and, in Asoka's words, " instead of the sound 
of the war-drum the sound of the drum of the Dharma is 
heard, while heavenly spectacles of processional cars, elephants, 
illuminations and the like, are displayed to the people " {Rock 
Edict IV). But the millennium had not arrived and human 
nature was not changed by the affirmation of great spiritual 
truths. The miracle which Asoka expected by his proclama- 
tions of the Dharma did not come to pass ; and the spiritual 
insight which he so earnestly desired to give to all his subjects 
is less evident in early Buddhist records than extravagant 
faith in the wonder-working powers of the bodily relics of the 
Saints who taught the Good Law. 

Asoka himself, according to Buddhist legends, did much 
to encourage such superstition by the most lavish expenditure 
on the building of stupas to contain such relics, but we may 
take it that the monkish tradition often did as little justice to 
Asoka's character as it did to the memory of the Enlightened 
One by attributing to him all the meticulous regulations 
prescribed for members of the Sangha. It may, however, be 
accepted as true that towards the end of his reign Asoka, 
in order to gain further progress along the Aryan Eightfold 
Path, adopted the strict ascetic practice of the Order and 
perhaps retired from active participation in State affairs. 
He died 226 B.C., in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, having 
attained to the spiritual rank of Arahat, or Saint, which is next 
to that of Full Enlightenment or Buddhahood. And if sanity 
of thought, uprightness of character, and love of humanity can 
be reckoned among the highest qualifications of sainthood, even 
the narrowest sectarian need not grudge him the honour. 
102 



ASOKA 

Various legends, more or less entitled to credence, throw side- 
lights upon Asoka's private life and domestic relations. One 
of his consorts, Karuvaki by name, followed his own religious 
inclinations, and her charitable donations are mentioned in 
one of the edicts. In his old age Asoka lost his favourite 
wife, Asandhimitra, who had been his faithful companion for 
many years. He then married a young and vain woman 
called Tishyarakshita, who is said to have been so irritated by 
Asoka's devotion to the Dharma that she attempted without 
success to destroy the holy Tree at Bodh-Gaya by incantations 
— a story which under the circumstances seems very true to 
life. Other folk-lore traditions tell of the tragic end of the 
young Empress. She is said to have been attracted by the 
beautiful eyes of Asandhimitra's son, Kunala, and to have 
conceived a violent passion for him ; but when the pious 
youth rejected her advances with horror Tishyarakshita's love 
turned to hate, and a base attempt against his life schemed 
by her was so far successful that the young prince was blinded 
by the Emperor's officials at Taksha-sila. Kunala, after many 
sufferings, found his way to his father's presence, and Asoka 
was so enraged by the discovery of the plot that he ordered 
Tish^^arakshita to be burned alive and inflicted terrible punish- 
ments upon all concerned in it. Kunala, so the story goes, 
afterwards recovered his sight through a miracle performed by 
a monk who lived at the holy shrine at Bodh-Gaya. 



103 



CHAPTER VII 

MAURYAN ART 

WHETHER in accordance with Aryan royal tradition 
a great monument was raised over Asoka's ashes 
by his grandson and successor, like those which 
were built at Sanchi to the memory of the Good Men he sent 
to teach the Dharma in the Himalayan region,^ there is as 
yet no evidence. But with the monuments of the Asokan 
period begins almost the earliest artistic record of Aryan 
civilisation in India yet discovered. With the exception of 
a few coins, a few remains of stone fortifications, a few hermit- 
ages carved in the living rock, and a few simple brick stupas, 
or burial-mounds, archaeological research has so far failed to 
reveal any important works of Indian artists and craftsmen, 
either Aryan or Dravidian, which can be definitely assigned 
to the pre-Mauryan period. The fact seems almost inexplicable 
when one contrasts it with the wonderful record of early 
Egyptian, Cretan, and Hellenic culture which has been brought 
to light in recent years. Differences of climatic and geological 
conditions and the use of different building materials account 
for it to a certain extent. A good deal is explained by the 
fact that archaeological research in India, having been until 
recent years spasmodic and unscientific, has not yet pene- 
trated below the accumulations which thirty or more centuries 
have piled over the remains of early Indian civilisation. But, 
as it stands now, Indian art when it first appears conspicuously 
in the ^ Maury an epoch had already reached a high state of 
technical development, though it has not yet assumed the 
characteristic forms of expression which Indian mysticism 
gave it in later times. 

1 See Rhys Davids' Buddhist India, pp. 299-300. 
104 



MAURYAN ART 

The sculptured art of the Mauryan period, as might be 
expected from the social conditions of the time, shows two 
very distinct phases. The first phase is distinguished by 
great nobility of design, a cultured form of expression, and 
the finest technical accomplishment. To this class, which 
doubtless represents the pure Aryan artistic tradition, belong 
the magnificent stone pillars — ^the imperial standards — which 
Asoka set up at various places for displaying his edicts. They 
were also placed as symbols of the Spiritual King, the Lord 
Buddha, at the gatewa3^s of holy shrines. They were derived 
from the royal or tribal ensigns which at the ancient Vedic 
sacrifices were set up to mark the sacrificial area, and were 
no doubt the work of the Aryan royal craftsmen, who, according 
to the Ramayana, held equal rank with the officiating priests, 
and, as Kautiliya tells, lived in the Brahman and Kshatriya 
quarters of the king's city. They were in State service, and, 
like the Brahmans, their persons were specially protected 
by the common law. At the same time they were forbidden 
to work for private gain. These were the master-builders 
who planned the Aryan settlements on the lines laid down by 
their Silpa-Sastras, built temples and royal palaces and all 
those public works which came within the scope of the central 
Government's functions. 

The artistic traditions of these royal craftsmen must have 
been inherited from the days of Aryan supremacy in the 
Euphrates valley, and it is not therefore surprising that there 
should be a close affinity between their art and that discovered 
in Aryan palaces in Persia ; but the theory that the Mauryan 
emperors imported all their best craftsmen from Persia shows 
the lack of insight into Indian thought upon which the common 
misunderstanding of Indian history is based. The symbolism 
of these royal craftsmen is thoroughly characteristic of Indo- 
Aryan thought, and the few suggestions of Hellenic and Persian 
influence are generally much more satisfactorily explained 
by considering the common origins of Indo-Aryan and 
Iranian art than by the assumption that the great Mauryan 
emperors set out to reproduce the palaces of the rival 

105 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Aryan dynasty which had exacted heavy tribute from Indo- 
Aryan freemen. 

The so-called ' Persian bell-shaped capital ' of these stately 
Mauryan pillars is a symbolic motif which is universal in 
Indian art. The label is misleading, for the capital represents 
a flower and not a bell. It is the mystic world-lotus with 
turned-down petals so often mentioned in Indian poetry and 
literature. In this particular case it is the blue lotus of the 
sky, Vishnu's flower, and the pillar, or imperial standard, 
surmounted by a lion or other heraldic animal, has the same 
significance of world-dominion as the State umbrella which 
is part of the paraphernalia of Indian royalty — for the umbrella 
also represents a lotus-flower with turned-down petals, as is 
seen in the sculptured ' tee ' which surmounts the relic shrines 
of ancient India. 

This lotus symbolism is more characteristic of Indian art 
than Persian. As an instance of archaeological misnomers it 
is interesting to note that the so-called sacred lotus of Egypt 
[Nelumbium speciosum) is not an Egyptian but an Indian 
flower.^ It may have been imported into Egypt from Persia, 
or more probably from India, for it is doubtful whether it is 
indigenous in Persia. It certainly is so in India, where it is 
always recognised as the Brahma lotus, the Creator's flower, 
which unfolds at the first flush of morning light, when Ushas, 
the Dawn Maiden, flings open the doors of the sky. The pink 
petals of the flower are the robes of the Dawn Maiden, while 
the pericarp is the rising sun, the throne of the Creator. It 
is thus associated with the very earliest Vedic traditions of 
India, and it is quite possible that the sculptors who used the 
symbolism of the world-lotus in the palaces of Persepolis were 
some of the Aryan royal craftsmen of India taken into the 
service of the Great King. 

Other works which may certainly be ascribed to these royal 
craftsmen of India are the hermitages with finely polished 
walls carved out of the hardest granitic rock in the Barabar 
hills, near Gaya, by Asoka's command for the use of the 

^ The only Egyptian ' lotus ' are Nymphaea loins and Nymphaea cerulea, 
1 06 



MAURYAN ART 

Ajivika ascetics. The great chapter-houses and monasteries 
of Karle, Kanheri, Nasik, and other places are works of the 
same school of craftsmen in later times, which will be dealt 
with in their proper sequence. 

The second of the phases of Mauryan art is shown in the 
profuse sculpture of the stupas of Bharhut and Sanchi, which 
record current events or legends connected with the life of 
the Buddha as told in the Jatakas, This is folk-art expressed 
with the vigour and sincerity characteristic of its class in all 
countries. It cannot be called primitive, for it often reaches 
to a very high standard of technique which proves a tradition 
of great antiquity, but though the same Aryan symbolism 
runs through it all it is generally less cultured and refined 
than the handiwork of the royal craftsmen who superintended 
the design and construction of these Asokan relic shrines. 
It is clearly the work of the lower grades of craftsmen, classed 
as Vaisyas or Sudras, and being so, it is less pure in style : 
it is expressive of the craftsman's own racial character in 
combining many non-Aryan elements with the Aryan ideas 
which dominate it. 

These two phases of M^-uryan art, therefore, when rightly 
understood throw a vivid light upon the social conditions of 
the time and are a revelation of the effect of the Buddhist 
propaganda in gradually welding together the diverse con- 
stituents of Indian society in the time of Asoka — an effect 
which can be seen still more clearly in later monuments. 

Before going further into the history of Indian art it is 
necessary to consider briefly the fundamental ideas which 
underlie the architecture of all Indian religious sects, from the 
most remote antiquity down to the present day. The Buddha 
and Mahavira were not the first of Indian sages to propound 
a rule of life for the people ; for the whole aim of Indian 
philosophy was to discover a way of living, intended at first 
for the chosen people, the Aryans, exclusively, but afterwards 
for all who came within the Aryan pale, and later on for 
humanity at large. Philosophical ideas always ranged between 
two extremes. The extreme pessimists preached the vanity of 

107 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

all things and tlie futility of human endeavour, and so found 
the burial- or cremation-ground the most appropriate place 
for meditation. Naturally the symbols of their religious faith 
became the stupa or funeral-mound, the ashes of the sacrificial 
fire, the snow-clad mountain-peak, the moon or the setting 
sun, and the white water-lily which unfolds in the night. 
Their way of life was to obtain true knowledge — jndna-marga — 
nothing else was worth struggling for. This cult was most 
typical of Brahmanical thought, though by no means confined 
to one school. At the other extreme was the optimist and 
man of action, rejoicing in the vigour of mind and body, who 
found the way of wisdom in doing his daily round of work 
without regard to the life hereafter. His was the karma- 
marga, the way of work, and the symbols were the rising sun, 
which aroused the world from sleep, and the lotus, which 
unfolded at the first flush of dawn. 

Between the two extremes was the man who sought the 
mean — the middle way — both in action and in thought. His 
symbols were the sun in mid-heaven, the blue lotus-flower, 
which reflects the azure of the cloudless sky ; and the places 
best for meditation he found under the shade of the spreading 
tree, which turned his thoughts to the mysteries of life, or 
on a pleasant hill-top, from whence he could survey the world 
around. His was the hhakti-marga, the way of faith, inspired 
by joy and content with this world and hope for the next. 

These three direct ways of thought, connected by many 
intersecting curves, were by no means sectarian but common 
to all religious schools. Nor can they be said to be purely 
Aryan or Indian, for they express psychological distinctions 
which are universal. At the same time the symbolism which 
belongs to them is more characteristic of Indian artistic thought 
than of any other school, and forms the key to the understanding 
of much that archaeologists have either misinterpreted or left 
wholly unexplained. It must be understood, however, that 
no indication of this classification and the nomenclature which 
belongs to it will be found in Sanskrit literature until compara- 
tively late times ; but ages before Indian philosophers analysed 
lo8 



1 



MAURYAN ART 

and systematised their religious doctrine it is possible to trace 
ttie gradual evolution of ideas by the study of artistic symbols 
typical of the different schools. 

The earliest symbols found in Aryan art are the swastika, 
the stupa, the holy mountain which represents the pivot or 
centre of the world, and the tree — all of which may be said to 
belong to the first dawn of Aryan religion, though they were 
not the exclusive property of the Aryan race. The swastika, 
which was a sacrificial symbol indicating the direction of the 
circumambtilatory rite [Pradakshind) of the altar, was contained 
in the cross-roads of the Aryan village plan running east and 
west, north and south — which, as we have already seen, were 
terminated by the four principal gates dedicated to the four posi- 
tions of the sun. The village itself was consecrated ground, 
the altar of sacrifice being represented by the central platform 
or enclosure built round the Council Tree of the village at the 
meeting of the cross-roads, which was also the chosen site 
for the worship of Brahma the Creator, the Protector of the 
four quarters of the universe, if the village were a Brahman 
one, or of Vishnu the Preserver, in the person of the tribal 
chief or king, if the fighting class predominated in the village. 
In royal capitals the king's fortress-palace, chapel, and council- 
chamber took the place of the Council Tree of the elders and 
the shrine of the tutelary deity of the community. 

Thus the sculptures from the Bharhut stupa which show the 
Bodhi Tree pushing its branches out of the dome of a Buddhist 
shrine represent an ancient Aryan village council-house and 
temple appropriated to the teaching of the I^aw, as propounded 
by Sakya Muni, the Enlightened One. It is significant that 
the Buddha, as the Supreme Deity, subsequently took the 
place of Brahma in the Trinity of Buddha, Sangha, and Dharma, 
which Mahayanist ritual substituted for the Three Aspects of 
Brahmanism — Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. But by his own 
caste-fellows, the Kshatriyas, and by the mass of the people 
the Buddha was worshipped as Vishnu-Narayana, the Eternal 
One. The Brahmanical concept of the Three Aspects was 
based upon the three positions of the sun, at morning, noon, 

109 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and evening, or the three times of daily prayer, represented 
by the eastern, southern, and western gates of the Aryan village 
plan. In Mahayanist sculpture the stupa, placed upon a 
square base carved on each face with an image of the Buddha, 
was substituted for the four-headed image of Brahma as the 
guardian of the four cross-roads. 

The stupa, though of course venerated as a memorial of the 
dead by all sects, probably did not have a place within the 
boundaries of the Aryan village until it was adopted as a 
symbol of a religious cult, as it was by Buddhists, Jains, and 
by Brahmans of the Saiva school. Its place was in the crema- 
tion- or burial-ground, outside the village boundaries and in or 
near a grove of trees sacred to the lyord of Death, to which 
ascetics of various schools resorted. In Asoka's time, however, 
the stupa had become a universal symbol. It was, like the 
fortified Aryan village, enclosed by a fence or stockade, which 
marked the procession-path of the worshippers and was entered 
by four gates at the four cardinal points. These gateways at 
Bharhut and Sanchi are stone reproductions of the massive 
timber constructions which formed the approaches to the 
fortified capital of an Aryan chieftain, or to his palace enclosure. 
On either side of the gateways are the carved stone royal, or 
tribal, standards, similar to those which marked off the sacri- 
ficial area in ancient Vedic rites, though the symbolism is 
adapted to the ideas of the Buddhist cosmogony. The stupa 
itself, like the Aryan village plan, was a symbol of the cosmos, 
the solid hemispherical dome representing the heavenly vault, 
the mystic blue lotus with turned-down petals which forms 
the heavenly vault. A reliquary in the form of a Vedic sacri- 
ficial altar surmounted the dome ; but the precious relics for 
which the stupa was built were often for greater safety placed 
in a chamber built in the solid brickwork of the dome. The 
umbrella which crowned the reliquary was a part of the insignia 
of royalty which gradually, like the dome, acquired a m^^stic 
significance and developed into the pyramidal * tee,' a series 
of umbrellas symbolising the heavenly tree or succession of 
spiritual spheres leading up to final release from the chain of 
no 



MAURYAN ART 

existences. This ancient funeral monument is thus revealed 
in Asokan sculpture as the principal object of worship for 
the members of the Buddhist Sangha leading an ascetic life 
who collected in the assembly halls or chapter-houses of the 
Order to listen to the words of the Blessed One. It was placed 
in the apse at the end of the chapter-house, and was either 
profusely sculptured or covered with a layer of fine white 
plaster and painted in fresco. 

The stupa was equally venerated by the Jains, who also 
used it as a reliquary. But it is an error to regard it as a 
sectarian symbol used only by Buddhists and Jains. As a 
cenotaph or burial-mound — a memorial of the dead and symbol 
of Yama the lyord of Death — it was venerated by all sects alike. 
The Jains and Buddhists only used it to symbolise a definite 
philosophical concept — that of Pari-Nirvana, or the merging 
of the finite Bgo with the Infinite. In orthodox Brahman 
philosophy it was a symbol of Vishnu-Narayana, Eternity. A 
natural symbol analogous to the stupa was Siva's solitary 
snow-capped hermitage. Mount Kailasa, upon the slopes of 
which grew the arboreal emblem of eternity, the stately 
Himalayan deodar, or tree of the Devas. 

The antithesis to the stupa and to Siva's paradise in the 
eternal snows was the holy Mount Meru, Vishnu's abode, 
which his devotees regarded as the centre or pivot of the 
universe. With this terrestrial paradise were associated all 
kinds of trees which from their flowers, fruit, or foliage were 
considered the special gifts of the I^ord of lyife, the Preserver, 
lyong before Aryan thinkers attempted to unravel the mysteries 
of life and death the high hill with fertile slopes had been 
regarded as a holy place from being used as a natural altar 
for tribal sacrifices and as a site for the stronghold of the 
chieftain, who was the high priest of sacrifice. So in 
Asoka's time Indra's or Vishnu's mountain had from asso- 
ciations of remote antiquity become connected with the 
Kshatriya schools of religious thought which sought the way 
of hhakti, or devotion, while the Brahman ascetics who 
followed the path of knowledge as the shortest way to 

III 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

salvation found their most appropriate symbol in the stupa and 
snow-clad mountain. 

Architecturally the symbol of Vishnu's mountain first 
appears in the great shrine of Bodh-Gaya, built close to 
or over the Bodhi Tree under which the Buddha reached 
the zenith of spiritual consciousness, Nirvana — Vishnu-Surya, 
the Preserver, the midday sun, having by that time taken the 
place of Indra as the patron deity of Aryan royalty. The cur- 
vilinear pyramid, called the sikhara, which surmounts the 
shrine is in its architectonic conception a representation of 
the holy Mount Meru, but symbolically it has the same signi- 
fication as Asoka's carved pillars or imperial standards : it 
stands for the mystic four-petalled lotus with turned-down 
petals, the so-called amalaka or stone finial which crowns it 
representing the fruit of the flower. In the pillar the amalaka 
is the abacus of the ' bell-shaped ' capital. 

The existing temple of Bodh-Gaya can hardly be dated 
earlier than the first century before Christ, ^ but there is good 
reason to believe that it reproduces the design of the original 
temple which Asoka built on the same site. The motif of the 
sikhara, which afterwards became so conspicuous in Indian 
temple architecture, especially in the north, can be traced 
back to a much earlier date, and was in all probability brought 
by Aryan builders into India from Mesopotamia. It appears 
in the famous stele of Naram-Sin, who ruled in the Euphrates 
valley about 2700 B.C., which was discovered by M. de Morgan 
in Susa. This remarkable sculpture records the victory of 
Naram-Sin over Satuni, King of lyulabu. For the Indian 
historian it is of absorbing interest because the sculptor uses 
exactly the same motifs which are found in Indian architecture, 
clothed with Aryan religious symbolism, three thousand years 
later. Naram-Sin, the conspicuous figure in the upper part 
of the stele, having stormed the hill-fortress of his adversary, 
who lies prostrate outside of it stricken with an arrow, is 
trampling on the bodies of the slain and hurling them down the 
slope of the hill. The conical structure on the hill-top is 
^ See Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India, by the author (Murray). 
112 




7- Buddhist Stupa from the Amaravat? Scui<ptures 



MAURYAN ART 

strikingly suggestive of the Indian sikhara, not only on 
account of its form but because the sculptor has placed 
over it the midday sun, Vishnu's blue lotus-flower, which 
Indian builders represented by its fruit, the amalaka, used as 
the finial of the sikhara. The inference to be drawn from 
this sculpture may be that the sikhara was originally only 
a tribal watch-tower placed upon a hill, just as the toran, 
or gateway of the stupa, represented the fortified post for the 
sentinels who guarded the entrances of an Aryan settlement 
or camp. 

In one of the Nineveh sculptures, described by Layard i as 
a representation of the palace of Sennacherib, both the sikhara 
and the stupa appear side by side in a group of buildings placed 
at the foot of a mountain upon the slopes of which the arboreal 
emblems of life and death, the flowering tree and the cedar 
or pine-tree, are planted. In this case, as in Naram-Sin's 
stele, the sikharas are probably the watch-towers of the royal 
citadel ; the domed structures represent royal tombs like the 
sttipas or reliquaries of Aryan saints in India. Used symboli- 
cally the sikhara and stupa often appear side by side in Indian 
temple enclosures, but the significance of the juxtaposition 
and the derivation of it have been entirely misunderstood 
by Fergusson and other archaeological writers. 

The significant point for the historian is that in the ideas 
connected with the earliest monuments of Indian art, the 
stupa and sikhara-temple, one can already recognise the lines 
of cleavage which separate the two great sectarian groups 
of modern Hinduism, the Saivas and Vaishnavas ; the former, 
being the intellectual heirs of Brahman philosophy, based 
upon jnana-marga, the path of knowledge, while the latter 
incline to the teaching of the Kshatriya schools which followed 
the bhakti-marga, the way of devotion and faith. 

The reason why Buddhist art of the Mauryan period appro- 
priated both" sets of symbols was that the learned members 
of the Sangha, as exponents of the true Law, claimed greater 
authority than the Brahmans in divine knowledge, and at 
* Nineveh, 2nd Series, Pi. XVI. 

H 113 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the same time the popular teaching of the Buddha as a 
Kshatriya leader of thought won for him the personal devotion 
of the masses, by whom he was regarded as the great lyiberator 
and representative of Aryan ideals of kingship. The sentiment 
of hero-worship was concentrated in the bhakti-cult ; this we 
may take to explain the fact that while in the chapter-houses 
of the Sangha the stupa was invariably the chief object of 
veneration, the sacred sites of Buddhism, like Sarnath and 
Bodh-Gaya, are found strewn with numbers of stone sikhara- 
shrines in miniature, sometimes carved with images of Ganesha 
or other household gods, but all expressing the same senti- 
ment — ^the people's adoration for their great national hero, 
the Sakya Prince. 

When the Vishnu, or sikhara, temple — dedicated to any 
sectarian worship, Buddhist, Jain, or Brahmanical — ^was not 
in the centre of the Aryan village or town, as the shrine of its 
tutelary deity, it had its appointed place at the western end 
of the King's Road. In this position it had one entrance only, 
facing the east. The eastern front of the sikhara was pierced 
by a great window of lotus-leaf shape, ^ symbolising the rising 
sun and placed so that the first flush of dawn might light up 
the interior of the shrine, for Vishnu-Narayana, the sun at 
its nadir, was awakened from sleep by his bride, I^akshmi, 
to whom under the name of Ushas, the Dawn Maiden, so 
many of the Vedic hymns are addressed. A similar * horse- 
shoe ' or sun window — ^which is the most characteristic feature 
of Asokan architecture, being used as the principal decorative 
motif as well as for practical purposes — was always placed 
over the main entrance of the assembly halls of the Sangha, so 
as to throw a brilliant light from the rising or setting sun, 
or from the moon, upon the altar or stupa-symbol at the 
further end. It was a most effective device both from an 
artistic and utilitarian point of view, for nothing could be 
more impressive than the contrast of the shining altar and the 
dim light of the interior of the hall ; at the same time it gave 
perfect ventilation to the sacred edifice. The lotus-leaf or I 

* Or, according to Western terminology, horseshoe-shape. 
114 



MAURYAN ART 

sun window of early Indo- Aryan architecture was the proto- 
type of the rose window of Christian churches, where it was 
similarly placed and served the same purpose of lighting up 
the altar. The churches were also frequently oriented on 
the same principle, i.e. so that the rays of the morning sun 
would fall upon the altar on the day of the patron saint to 
whom the church was dedicated. 

The record of Indian art of the Mauryan period is almost 
entirely confined to the solid brick-built stupas and to the 
assembly halls and hermitages cut out of the living rock. 
As many of the latter are evidently reproductions of wooden 
architecture, it has been assumed that all early Indian archi- 
tecture was wooden, like that of Burma at the present day. 
That was probably true of Magadha, the central province of 
the Mauryan Empire. Megasthenes tells us that Pataliputra 
was built of wood because the city was in constant danger from 
floods and the breaches of the banks of the river upon which 
it was built. The Atharva Veda also gives evidence that 
wood was preferred as building material on account of the 
facility it gave for shifting the site of a house. A Brahman 
to whom a house has been presented composes an invocation 
to Indra to facilitate the removal of it : 

" The Builder has drawn thee together, pressed thee together, 
placed five knots upon thee. Skilfully as the priest who 
butchers [the sacrificial animal] do we with Indra' s aid disjoint 
thy limbs. 

" From thy beams, thy bolts, thy frame and thy thatch, 
from thy sides [O house] abounding in treasures, the fastenings 
of the dovetailed joints of the reed [-covering] do we loosen 
here from ' the mistress of dwelling.' " {Atharva Veda, ix, 3.) 

Probably the Aryans at the time of their first entry into 
India and for a long time afterwards found movable buildings, 
which could be dismantled and put upon their bullock-carts 
as they trekked from place to place, the most convenient for 
their settlements. The great primeval forests made wood 
plentiful, and the sites of villages were often changed in times 
of drought or plague, or when they moved on to win more 

IIS 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

territory from the non- Aryan tribes. In later times it became 
a tradition that the site of a royal capital should be changed 
at least once every thousand years, as the soil by that time 
became unfit for human habitation. The fact that wood 
was used for the railings which enclosed the place of sacrifice, 
and for the carved posts to which the victims were bound, 
would also give to wooden forms a sacramental meaning. 
This is sufficient to explain the fact that the stone rails enclos- 
ing the stupas of Sanchi and Bharhut are exact imitations of 
wooden construction, for they were probably built by, or 
under the supervision of, Magadhan royal craftsmen sent by 
Asoka for that purpose. But it is going much too far to 
assume that craft conditions similar to those of the Magadhan 
province prevailed all over the Mauryan Empire and that 
Indian builders of that time were being instructed in masonic 
craft by foreigners. There were doubtless many localities, 
as there are now, in which geological conditions made stone 
the most accessible and plentiful building material : the 
technical perfection of Indian stonework of the Asokan period 
indicates a masonic tradition many centuries old. 

The Bharhut and Sanchi sculptures bear witness to the 
wonderful continuity and vitality of the Indian craft tradition 
both in domestic and religious architecture. The village 
dwellings sculptured there are of the same type as the Bengali 
cottages of the present day, with roofs of bamboo and thatch 
admirably designed to meet the heavy rainfall of the south- 
west monsoon. The three-storied building described as ' the 
Palace of the Gods ' at Bharhut finds almost a replica in a 
wealthy merchant's mansion at Bikanir — not very remote from 
Bharhut — built recently by a living Indian master-builder. 

The shrine adjoining ' the Palace of the Gods ' devoted to 
the worship of Buddhist emblems shows the traditional plan 
of a Hindu temple, which may be here described. The garbJia- 
grihya, or inner chamber containing the sacred image or symbols, 
is generally square in plan, but sometimes octagonal, circular, 
or shaped like a lotus-flower with extended petals. This is 
roofed either by the sikhara — the Vishnu symbol — or by the 
ii6 



MAURYAN ART 

pyramidal tower described by Fergusson as ' Dravidian/ 
which is a development of the stupa dome shown in the shrine 
of ' the Palace of the Gods.' In front of the garbha-grihya is 
the antamla, a porch or verandah for the priests or custodians 
of the shrine, which is often connected with a pavilion or porch 
for the shelter of the worshippers, known as the mandapam. 
The latter is generally supported by four or more pillars and 
is either flat-roofed or covered by a dome. The mandapam 
was both the church and assembly-hall of the village or town. 
All these features of a medieval and modern Hindu temple 
plan are clearly indicated in the contemporary representation 
of a Buddhist shrine of the third century before Christ. 

Another striking characteristic of Mauryan art is that in 
all the sculptured representations of Buddhist shrines and 
of Buddhist worship the image of the Buddha never appears, 
and the events of the Master's life from the time of the Great 
Renunciation are told by aniconic symbols or hieroglyphs. 
Thus the attainment of Nirvana is S37mbolised by a pipal tree 
with a throne or altar in front upon which various sacred 
emblems are placed for worship. A prayer- wheel — ' the Wheel 
of the lyaw ' — stands for the proclamation of the Dharma at 
Sarnath, and a stupa represents the Pari-Nirvana, or the 
Buddha's death at Kusinagara. 

The orthodox canons of the Buddhist faith in Asoka's time 
did not allow the personality of the Buddha to be worshipped 
in the assembly halls of the Sangha, though probably pictures 
and images of the Master were to be found among the household 
gods of the non- Aryan laity. This puritanical spirit was quite 
in consonance with the esoteric teaching of the Vedas, which 
had a profound influence upon Aryan artistic expression : 
" The vulgar look for their gods in water ; men of wider 
knowledge in celestial bodies ; the ignorant in wood, bricks, 
or stones ; but the wisest men in the Universal Self." Aryan 
religious symbolism not only rejected the graven image, but 
for many centuries refrained from committing to writing the 
esoteric doctrines of the Upanishads, from the feeling that the 
revelation of divine mysteries was too holy for any materialistic 

117 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

vehicles of thought. It could only be imparted by direct 
intercourse of soul with sotil and only realised by profound 
meditation. It was therefore handed down from one genera- 
tion to another, from asram to asram and from guru to chela, 
the most elaborate precautions being taken to ensure the 
perfection of this traditional Aryan scholarship. When the 
language of the Vedas ceased to be a living one, Sanskrit 
grammar was perfected by Brahman scholars to ensure perfect 
accuracy of expression, and a wonderful system of memorising 
was established which extended to the counting of each syllable 
of the sacred slokas, while the correct pronunciation and 
intonation of the chants was religiously observed, for a mantram 
lost its efficacy if a single syllable were incorrect in expression 
or intonation. 

The aniconic symbolism of Asokan sculpture reflects the 
spirit of Vedic idealism, but at the same time the popular 
aspects of Indo- Aryan religion are also represented. The Devas, 
the nature-spirits, who from time immemorial had been regarded 
as the patron deities of the Aryan community, stand guard 
at the four gateways of the Bharhut stupa, and popular divinities 
like the snake-gods and goddesses and other denizens of the 
forest, lake, and river, carved with the intense realism of 
popular art, join in the worship of the symbols of the faith. 
We have therefore in these invaluable historical documents a 
most significant illustration of the tolerant spirit of Buddhist 
teaching in Asoka's time, as declared in the Emperor's own 
words : " The growth of the essence of the matter assumes 
various forms, but the root of it is restraint of speech : to 
wit, a man must not do reverence to his own sect by dis- 
paraging that of another man for trivial reasons. Depreciation 
should be for adequate reasons only, because the sects of other 
people deserve reverence for one reason or another " {Rock 
Edict XII). ^ 

^ Vincent Smith, Asoka, p. 128. 



118 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE BREAK-UP OF THE MAURYAN 
EMPIRE AND THE TURK! INVASIONS 

THE Mauryan dynasty did not survive many years after 
the death of x\soka. He was succeeded by his 
grandson Dasaratha, a name which recalls that of the 
Aryan king of the Mitanni who eleven centuries earlier had 
ruled in Mesopotamia. Even before Asoka's death events 
occurred which foreshadowed coming danger to India from the 
quarter whence troubles always came — the north-west fron- 
tier. About 246 B.C. Diodotos, satrap of the Baktrian province 
of the kingdom of Syria, threw off the overlordship of Babylon 
and established an independent Hellenic kingdom on the Indian 
border, which was soon to renew the menace Chandragupta 
Maurya had removed. Dasaratha seems to have continued 
his grandfather's zealous religious propaganda and relied upon 
the virtue of the Buddha's teaching to protect his dominions 
from foreign aggression. His reign lasted only about eight 
years, and as none of his successors had the capacity of Chandra- 
gupta and Asoka for holding the reins of empire, the numerous 
states which had acknowledged the suzerainty of Magadha 
one by one renounced the supreme authority of the King of 
Kings at Pataliputra, and the Mauryan imperial dynasty 
virtually came to an end when Brihadratha was assassinated 
by his commander-in-chief, Pushyamitra, in 183 B.C., though 
descendants of Asoka continued to be rajas of Magadha down 
to the seventh century a.d. 

Even before this tragedy the north-west provinces appear 
to have been lost to the Magadhan Empire, and the dangers 
threatening the State may have induced the Council of the 
empire to put the strong man Pushyamitra on the throne of 

119 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Magadha in the place of the weak successors of Asoka ; for, 
though he is said to have imprisoned one of the ministers, an 
Aryan royal dynasty could hardly have been superseded by 
another without popular support and the consent of the 
majority of the Council. It may have been a Brahman faction 
which put an end to Mauryan supremacy, for when he had 
established his right as King of Kings by repelling a double 
invasion of Magadha — one by Menander, a relative of the Bak- 
trian king, and another by the Raja of Kalinga — Pushy amitra 
celebrated the event and his consecration as the founder of 
the Sunga royal line by the performance of the famous Vedic 
rite, the great horse sacrifice, which Asoka had suppressed. 

This was the most elaborate of the ancient Aryan sacrifices, 
and it could only be performed by kings for the welfare of the 
State and as a symbol of universal dominion. Thousands of 
Brahman priests assisted, and they were lavishly rewarded by 
gifts from the royal treasury. After appropriate ceremonies 
a young war-horse, chosen for its auspicious colour and marks, 
was led towards the north-east and then released to wander 
at its will, in company with a hundred old horses, for a year. 
The troop was escorted by a guard of a hundred Kshatriya 
youths, and the king's army followed to fight any hostile 
forces which dared to stop the passage of the sacrificial animal. 
The success of the sacrifice naturally depended upon the 
victory of the challenging army. The rulers of the states 
through whose territories the horse wandered (or was judiciously 
guided), if they acknowledged the suzerainty of the royal 
sacrificer or were defeated in battle, followed in his (the horse's) 
train and assisted in his further progress. In the meantime 
at the royal capital the king was officiating at various sacred 
rites ; the court minstrels and story-tellers daily chanted and 
recited his praises and tales of his ancestors' prowess ; offerings 
were made to Savitri, the goddess of wisdom, and alms were 
bestowed upon the attendant Brahmans. After a year's 
victorious progress the horse, accompanied by the subject 
rajas, was brought back in triumph. It was then yoked to a 
golden car with three other horses and, after elaborate cere- 

120 



B R E A K-U P OFMAURYAN EMPIRE 

monies, sacrificed with many otiier victims to Agni, the Fire- 
spirit, representing the sun, and to Soma, the intoxicating 
juice of the plant so called, which was the nectar of the gods 
and deceased ancestors and specially associated with the moon 
and the god of war.^ In this rite, as in the stories of the 
Ramayana and Mahabharata, one can trace the distinctions 
between the Surya cult and the Chandra or Soma cult which 
divided the Aryan clans into ' Surya-putras ' and ' Chandra- 
putras.' 2 

Pushyamitra's great horse sacrifice was long remembered 
in Northern India, and the traditions were embodied in 
Kalidasa's play, Mdlavikdgnimitra, or the story of Malavika 
and Agnimitra, written about the fifth century a.d. Here 
it is said that a body of Yavana, or Greek, cavalry attempted 
to seize the horse as it wandered on the south bank of the 
river Sindhu in Raj put ana, but that after a fierce struggle 
they were driven off by Pushyamitra's forces, led by his grand- 
son Vasumitra, * the mighty bowman.' 

The celebration of this great national Aryan festival by 
Pushyamitra has been taken by Mr Vincent Smith and other 
writers to indicate a reaction towards Brahmanism and the 
beginning of the gradual extinction of the Buddhist religion 
in India. ^ It is necessary to consider how far this is true 
and to what extent Buddhism can be said to have been extin- 
guished in the land of its birth. That Pushyamitra celebrated 
his victory over his enemies by the revival of the great national 
festival cannot by itself be taken to mean a decline in the 
Buddhist religion. Nor is it likely that Pushyamitra's perse- 
cution of the Buddhist monks — assuming that the tradition 
to this effect is reliable — was anything but a stimulus to the 
faith of the Buddha's followers. Buddhism as a religion 
never became extinct in India, though as a community the 
Sangha was dissolved and disestablished from the position it 
held in the State. And if the Brahman representatives of 

1 See Barnett's Antiquities of India, pp. 169-171. 

2 Ibid. 

^ Early History of India, 2nd edit., p. 190. 

121 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Aryan intellectuality took a leading part in the making of 
Buddhism a world-religion, Buddhist philosophy was equally 
powerful in the influence it exercised over Brahmanical 
thought ; so that neither Brahmanism nor Buddhism in 
Pushyamitra's time could have been quite the same as it was 
in the time of Asoka. 

Brahman influence was never supreme in pre-Buddhist 
times ; such influence as it had was won by force of intellect 
alone. Although Asoka abolished certain Vedic sacrifices and 
diverted much public and private patronage formerly bestowed 
upon Brahmans as such to the Buddhist religious organisations, 
there is no reason to suppose that the Brahman intellect 
failed to adapt itself to the new position as readily as it has 
to modern conditions. Brahman members of the Sangha 
would change their names and lose their Brahmanhood, but 
it is most unlikely that they lost either their social status or 
their intellectual influence. The new Brahmanism which 
sprang up after the extinction of the Mauryan dynasty was 
not, therefore, a sectarian reaction, but the sequence of a 
process of assimilation and adaptation which was charac- 
teristic of Aryan intellectuality. 

It is supposed that Patanjali, the great Sanskrit grammarian 
and reputed author of the Yoga-sutras, lived in Pushyamitra's 
reign and witnessed the celebration of the great horse sacrifice. 
We may well believe that the revival of Brahman scholarship 
at this time was in a measure due to the exact logical S3^stem 
taught in the Buddhist schools. Just as Christian thought 
in the present day has been led to a more precise statement 
of its position and to a readjustment of its views by the search- 
light of modern science, so Vedic Brahmanism was cleared 
of many intellectual cobwebs by the scientific broom which 
Buddhist logic applied to it, Buddhist philosophy, like 
modern science, recognised no arguments which could not 
be referred to the inexorable law of cause and effect implied 
in its interpretation of Dharma. When the Brahmans found 
that the sanctity of Vedic traditions no longer sufficed to 
gain acceptance for their theories they fortified their position 

122 



BREAK-UP OF MAURYAN EMPIRE 

by applying the same logical system to the interpretation of 
the Vedas, and by a searching investigation into the founda- 
tions of their beliefs. Thus the intellectual stimulus given 
by Buddhist teaching was the indirect cause of the rising 
influence of Brahmanism in the second century before Christ. 

Whatever truth there may be in the stories of the persecution 
of the Buddhists by Pushyamitra — Buddhist chronicles allege 
that he burnt their monasteries and killed many of the monks — 
it is certain that it was not against Buddhism as a religion, 
but against the Sangha as a political power, that such violent 
means of suppression were directed. It would have been a 
flagrant outrage upon the Indo- Aryan sense of royal justice 
for a king to attempt to controvert any form of religious 
argument except by the weapons of logic in the public debating 
halls. Pushyamitra, who had been the instrument of the 
punishment of the Mauryan dynasty for neglect of the duties 
of Aryan kingship and had yet to make the inheritance of his 
own line secure, would hardly have been so impolitic as to 
start the persecution of a powerful religious community, 
though he may have punished political and social offences 
with the severity recognised by Indo-Aryan law even in 
Asoka's time. If, therefore, there is any truth in the Buddhist 
tradition, we may take it that some members of the Sangha 
were concerned in conspiracies against the Sunga dynasty. 

Pushyamitra ruled as the paramount sovereign of Northern 
India for about five years after the repulse of the last Hellenic 
invasion under Menander. In driving the foreign invader 
from the sacred soil of Aryavarta he played the same role as 
the great Mauryan emperors, though not with the same 
success. His empire did not include the provinces beyond the 
Indus, and probably not even the Panjab or the territory 
south of the Narbada river, for the rise of the Andhra dynasty 
deprived Magadha of most of its southern provinces. Neither 
did he retain the suzerainty of Kalinga, the conquest of which 
had caused Asoka such profound remorse, though he success- 
fully repelled the invasion of Magadha from that quarter. 

Pushyamitra was succeeded in 148 B.C. by his son, the 

123 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Crown Prince Agnimitra. The Sunga dynasty counted ten 
kings and lasted 112 years before it came to the same inglorious 
end as the Maury an about 72 B.C. The last of the line were a 
succession of weaklings whose only record is neglect of their 
royal duties and debauchery ; so that it is not surprising that 
the Magadhan Council of State took measures to restore 
political stability by putting an end to the Sunga dynasty 
in the same way as the Mauryan line had been extinguished. 
The tenth king, Devabhuti, a dissolute creature, was disposed 
of by what Western writers have stigmatised as a Brahman 
plot. But the violent measures adopted were probably 
approved by the ministerial Council and by public opinion 
of the time as a necessary act of State policy. 

Vasudeva, who took a leading part in the tragedy, suc- 
ceeded Devabhuti as king, but his dynasty, known as the 
Kanva, failed to revive the glories of the Magadhan Empire, 
and in 27 B.C. the fourth of the line, Susarman, was slain in 
an attack on Pataliputra by one of the Andhra kings. Magadha 
then lost its position as the paramount Indo-Aryan state in 
Northern India for more than three centuries, though as a 
centre of Buddhist culture it continued to exercise the greatest 
intellectual influence. 

Even during Pushyamitra's reign Magadha was barely able 
to resist the ever-increasing pressure of invasion from the 
north-west. Menander — or Milinda, as he is called in the 
Buddhist chronicles — was strongly established at Kabul, which 
had been included in the Asokan Empire, and though he was 
defeated in his attack on Pataliputra, he, or the petty Baktrian 
princes who acknowledged his authority, kept firm hold of 
the Indus valley, Sind, and Rajputana. It was not until 
the latter part of his reign that Pushyamitra ventured to 
celebrate the great horse sacrifice which asserted his right 
to the diminished empire of the Mauryans. 

It is interesting for archaeologists but unnecessary for the 
understanding of Indian history to follow the chequered fortunes 
of the numerous Parthian and Baktrian kings who alternately 
fought with each other and struggled for the possession of the 
124 



BREAK-UP OF MAURYAN EMPIRE 

north-west provinces of India. After many years of indecisive 
warfare the political situation in Western Asia was entirely 
changed by the appearance of new and strange combatants 
in the arena. Pushyamitra himself might not have succeeded 
in resisting the advance of the Graeco-Baktrian power had 
not Menander's attention been diverted by the necessity of 
meeting another foe on his own north-eastern border. Abotit 
170 B.C. the Sakas, a great tribe of Turki nomads, were pushed 
out of their pastures to the north of the Upper Jaxartes by 
others, called the Yueh-chi or Kushans, and began to trek 
southwards. Thirty or forty years afterwards they overran 
the Parthian and Baktrian kingdoms, and, with the Yueh-chi 
and Parthian tribes following them, they began to pour over 
the Indus and gradually established themselves in the Panjab, 
Rajputana, and Kathiawar. 

There were reasons apart from prospects of conquest and 
plunder which had turned the stream of Turki migration 
towards India — reasons which make a vast distinction between 
this and the subsequent invasions of Tartar tribes when they 
came under the spell of Islam many centuries later. Though 
Brahman chronicles refer with horror and disgust to this dark 
period of foreign invasion which followed the break-up of the 
Mauryan Empire, it is necessary to understand that the 
political and social conditions were totally different from those 
which obtained in earlier or later invasions of India. Western 
Asia was by that time to a very large extent Buddhist. 
Menander was a pious follower of the Dharma whose sayings 
were recorded in the Buddhist chronicles. The Sakas, the 
Yueh-chi, and other Turki tribes may have been among those 
to whom Asoka's missionaries had carried the message of the 
Good L^aw. Certainly in Western Asia they came under 
Buddhist influence, and the nearer they approached the Indus 
valley the more they threw off their nomadic habits and 
adapted themselves to the settled life of Indo- Aryan civilisa- 
tion. Thus many of them must have entered India, not as 
barbarous conquerors, bent only on rapine and plunder, but 
as disciples of the Sakya Prince pressing forward to their 

125 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

holy land, as the Crusaders fought their way to the birthplace 
of the Prince of Peace at Bethlehem. 

Taksha-sila and Mathura, whether under Baktrian, Scythian, 
Parthian, or Turki rule, continued to be seats of Buddhist 
learning to which students from Western Asia and from China 
came in great numbers. And as the organisation of the 
Buddhist Church was Indo- Aryan, based upon the democratic 
tradition of the village community, the establishment of 
Baktrian or Turki Buddhist dynasties on Indian soil did not 
mean the break-up or a profound disturbance of Indo-Aryan 
society, but only the admission of new racial elements into the 
Indo-Aryan pale, and a contribution of new ideas to the Indian 
religious synthesis. Buddhism did not, as Asoka hoped, 
prevent war, but it profoundly affected the psychology of 
Asia and made India what it has remained to the present day, 
the most religious country in the world. 



126 



CHAPTER IX 

THE ARYANISATION OF SOUTHERN 
INDIA— THE KUSHAN EMPIRE 

THE ultimate political effect of the constant invasions 
from the north-west and of the weakening of the 
organisation of Mauryan rule was very much the 
same as that of the Muhammadan invasions in later times — ^to 
shift the centre of Indo-Aryan political power further south. 
The Aryanisation of the Dekhan and Southern India had 
begun long before the foundation of the Mauryan Empire, 
though it was not until after Asoka's death that the South 
Indian dynasties began to play an important part in the 
politics of Northern India. According to tradition Agastya 
was the first Aryan sage who, long before Asoka's mission, 
penetrated the great forest barrier south of the Vindhya 
mountain range and brought the wisdom of the Vedas to the 
Dravidians of the South. 

Whether Agastya was a real personage or a name for a 
new epoch in Dravidian civilisation may be disputed, but 
according to the Ramayana Rama visited his forest hermitage, 
and a temple dedicated to his memory in the Tanjore district 
still exists. The extent of the influence of Aryan culture 
upon the South is indicated by the tradition that, besides being 
the author of the first Tamil grammar and of works on Vedic 
philosophy, he is said to have been a great craftsman and to 
have brought the jungle under cultivation. Further, he is 
believed to have compiled treatises on chemistry and medicine 
and to have written the Silpa-Sastras which are still used by 
the temple craftsmen of Southern India.^ Indeed, Vedic 

^ See Ancient India, by S. Krisknaswami Aiyangar, pp. 5, 8, and 30; and 
0. C. Gangoly's South Indian Bronzes, pp. 2-6. 

127 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

philosophy and religion can never be properly understood 
nor their influence on Indian civilisation appreciated by the 
methods of the Western philologist, for, though they certainly 
express the soul of India, they represent the spiritual essence 
of a great system of national education in all the practical 
concerns of life, including agriculture, arts and crafts, science, 
and political economy. It is significant that craftsmen are 
always closely associated with religious propaganda in Buddhist 
and Brahmanical history, as they are in that of Christianity. 
The stapathi, or master-builder, is described in the Silpa-Sastras 
as officiating at the religious ceremonies which preceded the 
laying out of the Indo- Aryan town or village, and some of the 
metal-workers and carpenters of Southern India still retain 
as their caste distinction the name 'Acharya,' which denotes 
a teacher of religion. 

The beginning of the legendary epoch connected with the 
name of Agastya has been referred to the eighth century B.C. 
Whether the chronology is correct or not, this epoch marked 
the opening up of Southern India to Aryan civilisation, which 
gradually, as in the north, so completely absorbed the pre- 
existing Dravidian traditions that though the Dravidian 
languages remained the vehicle of thought, and though racial 
characteristics were unaffected, Ar^^an ideas were the main- 
spring of all progressive movements, social and political, 
so that there remains nothing in South Indian literature or 
artistic record, and no event in its political history, which 
can be definitely referred to an earlier period. 

The earliest dynasties of which there is any record claimed 
descent from the Aryan heroes of the Mahabharata. The 
prehistoric Dravidian deities were absorbed in the pantheon 
of Brahmanical Hinduism. It is possible that the worship 
of the female principle in Hindu ritual was derived from 
Dravidian ideas of the Earth-Mother, but the earliest historical 
records of South Indian religion are connected with Ar^^an 
propaganda — Brahmanical, Jain, or Buddhist. Civilised Dravi- 
dian society gradually adopted the religion, including the 
social and political organisation, of the Aryan village commu- 
128 



ARYANISATION OF S. INDIA 

nities. Dravidian art and architecture were wholly impreg- 
nated with Vedic idealism and the craftsmen referred all 
their traditions to Aryan teachers. Throughout the Middle 
Ages, and afterwards when Northern India was almost entirely 
subject to the rule of Islam, the South remained the great 
stronghold of the Indo- Aryan tradition in religious literature, 
art, and polity. 

Of the four dynasties mentioned as rulers of the South in 
Asoka's edicts — ^the Chola, Pandya, Keralaputra, and Satiya- 
putra — ^hardly anything is known historically until after the 
decline of the Andhra power in the Dekhan, except that monas- 
teries were built by them for the Buddhist missions which 
Asoka sent. Megasthenes refers to the popular assemblies 
of the South as restraining the power of the local kings, and 
early Tamil records mention that builders from Magadha 
assisted in the construction of Dravidian palaces — ^both of which 
circumstances point to the adoption of Aryan traditions. 
The most definite facts recorded of South Indian history 
before the rise of the Andhra power are those of its commercial 
relations with Europe and the north of India. Teak, which 
must have come from the Malabar coast, has been found in 
the ruins of the Chaldean city of Ur. Gold, pearls, ivory, rice, 
pepper, peacocks, and apes are among the other natural 
products of Southern India carried by Dravidian ships from 
the seaports of the west coast which found their way to 
Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and in later times to Rome. The 
existence of this trade can be traced back with certainty to 
the seventh or eighth century B.C., though it probably began 
much earlier, as it is supposed from the striking resemblances 
in ethnic type that the Sumerian founders of Babylonia were 
of Dravidian stock. ^ 

The traditional plan of the Aryan village communities gives 
some indications of the existence of a similar trade by the 
most important land routes. The Mahakala, the Broad Street 
of the village, running north and south, was the way of the 
caravans conveying the rich merchandise from Dravida to 
1 Hall's History of the Near East, pp. 173-174. 

I 129 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the capitals of the Aryan kings in the north. The Silpa- 
Sastras appoint the south-east approach to the village as the 
proper site for travellers' rest-houses which afforded the 
necessary provision for man and beast ; and the door of the 
temple of I^akshmi, the giver of prosperity, specially worshipped 
by the Jain mercantile community, was also turned towards 
the south. 

Of the great extent of Dravidian commerce in the centuries 
immediately before and after the Christian era — ^the period 
we are now considering — ^there is abundant evidence in Tamil 
literature, in the writings of Greek and Roman historians, 
and in the quantities of Roman coins discovered in Southern 
India. India was then in close contact with the Hellenic 
world both by land and sea. Yavana, or Greek, merchants 
thronged the bazars of the Dravidian seaports and royal 
capitals to purchase pepper, precious stones (especially beryls), 
and fine silk and cotton fabrics ; the stalwart Yavana soldiers, 
or Asiatic Greeks, who may have come overland from the 
Graeco-Baktrian kingdom or by way of sea, were in demand 
for service in the bodyguards of the Dravidian kings. 

The Andhra power, which was then paramount in the 
South, and had begun to take a prominent part in North 
Indian politics, had its centre on the eastern side of Dravida, 
in the districts between the Godavari and Krishna rivers, the 
capital city, called Sri Kakulam, being conveniently situated 
for maritime trade near the mouth of the latter. In Asoka's 
time the Andhra State had acknowledged the suzerainty of 
Magadha, and the stupas of Amaravati, the sculptures of 
which are among the most valuable of Indian historical records, 
no doubt marked the site of one of the seats of Buddhist learning 
which received the great Emperor's patronage, if it was not 
among those which he himself established for the teaching 
of the Law. 

But after Asoka's death the Andhras threw off the authority 
of Pataliputra, and soon after 220 B.C., under a king named 
Krishna or Kanha, they had extended their rule right up the 
Godavari river to the town of Nasik, near its source in the 
130 



ARYANISATION OF S. INDIA 

Western Ghats, so that their dominions practically stretched 
across the Dekhan from sea to sea. The next one hears of 
them is that about i68 B.C. a king of that line aided Kharavela, 
the King of Kalinga, in the attack on Magadha which Pushya- 
mitra repulsed ; and circa 27 B.C. an unknown Andhra king 
slew Susarman, one of the Brahman successors of Pushyamitra's 
family on the throne of Pataliputra, and thus ended the Kanva 
dynasty. The mantle of Pushyamitra, as the defender of 
Indo-Aryan civilisation from the barbarian intruders of the 
north, then fell upon the Dravidian kings of the Dekhan 
until the revival of Magadhan power under the Guptas. 

Though the early kings of the Andhra line thus took a 
prominent part in the break-up of the political organisation 
which the Mauryan dynasty had created, they were not, 
like Pushyamitra and his successors, patrons of Brahmanism, 
but apparently continued after Asoka's death to support 
the propaganda of Gautama's and Mahavira's teaching in 
Southern India; for both the Buddhists and the Jains had 
much influence there for some centuries after the beginning of 
the Christian era. It was, however, the rise of the Kushan 
power in the north-west which gave a renewed impetus to 
Buddhist propaganda and completed the work of Asoka's 
missionaries in Central Asia, while Christianity at the same 
time began to build upon the foundations laid by them in 
the west. 

Buddhism in the century before Christ not only embraced 
a far larger number of followers than it had done two centuries 
earlier, but as a religious dogma had assumed a very different 
character from that which it presents in the edicts of Asoka. 
Asoka's interpretation of Gautama's message to the world 
was certainly in an Indian sense religious, though it was 
only a great humanitarian movement based upon the teaching 
of profound psychological truths. But we must guard our- 
selves from the error of assuming that even before Asoka's 
time this was all that Buddhism meant for the masses of the 
people who hailed the message as a revelation of divine truth, 
or even for the zealous instructed bhikkus who went from 

131 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

village to village to expound it at the meeting-place of the 
four crossways, where the Bodhi Tree, or a mandapam, gave 
shelter for the folk-assembly. The history of all world- religions 
shows how numerous and divergent are the sects and popular 
cults which spring from the parent stem, even in countries of 
far less extent and population than India ; and the earliest 
Buddhist chronicles give evidence that the Sangha represented 
many different schools of thought and many opinions counted 
as heretical in the Pali canons. 

However acceptable a philosophy of ethics such as Asoka's 
might have been to their intellectual leaders, it is certain 
that it would not have satisfied the religious cravings of the 
people if they themselves had not supplied the element of the 
miraculous and superhuman by ascribing to the Buddha himself 
all the attributes of divinity which he refused to claim, Bven 
in pre-Buddhist times Indo- Aryan religion, like that of Hellas, 
had always given a personal and anthropomorphic character 
to the popular deities. The Vedic gods were presumed to 
assist in person at the tribal sacrifices, taking their seats on 
the places reserved for them, strewn with the sacred kusha 
grass. Formerly, it was said, " men saw them when they 
came to the feast ; now they still are present, though invisible." 
Theological discussion in Vedic times mainly centred in the 
question as to which of these gods was the greatest ; and 
before the time of Buddha the idea had been evolved of One 
Supreme Power as the Controller of the Universe, formulated 
philosophically in the Upanishads and popularly represented 
by the Creator Brahma, or Vishnu the Preserver, whose shrine 
as the guardian deity of the whole Aryan community was 
placed at the meeting of the village crossways. 

Orthodox Brahmanical ritual did not permit an image of 
the Supreme Deity to be worshipped ; neither did the orthodox 
ritual of the Sangha when the Buddha took the place formerly 
assigned to Brahma, or Vishnu-Narayana, An empty throne 
with sacred footprints or other symbols carved or placed upon 
it, as is shown in the Sanchi sculptures, served to fix the minds 
of the faithful upon the presence of the Blessed One, but his 
132 



THE KUSHAN^ EMPIRE 

appearance could not be realised except by the eye of faith 
and by the mystic power of meditation. 

Thus it is that Indo- Aryan art before Buddhism had taken 
root in the Hellenistic kingdoms of the north-west of India 
shows so little trace of the worship of the Buddha as a divinity, 
though it probably existed long before that time. The king's 
craftsmen of the Mauryan period, representing as they did 
orthodox views of art and religion, would not be permitted 
to make a graven image of the Buddha to be set up in the 
assembly halls of the Sangha, though Brahmanical deities 
are carved on the capitals of the massive pillars of the Karle 
Chapter-house, seated on Vedic altars as of old when they 
came down to assist at the tribal sacrificial feasts. But the 
craftsmen patronised by the Buddhist kings of Baktria followed 
the Hellenic tradition, and were not bound by the restrictions 
of the orthodox Indian schools, so that already in the first 
century before Christ the monasteries and stupas of the country 
known as Gandhara began to be covered with sculptures of 
the Buddha, as the Deity worshipped alike by men and by the 
gods whom he had displaced. 

In the first efforts of these Hellenistic craftsmen to grasp 
Indian ideas the Buddha's personality is given as that of an 
Apollo, the Sun-god, either seated in the pose of an Indian 
yogi or standing as a guru expounding the doctrine of the 
Law. But the standpoint of archaeologists, following the 
lead of German scholars, that Gandharan sculptors inspired 
Indian craftsmen and created the Indian ideal of the divine 
Buddha, gives a hopelessly distorted view of Indian history. 
These Gandharan sculptures are the crude efforts of uncultured 
Graeco-Roman craftsmen to realise the mystical conceptions 
of the Buddha's personality suggested to them by their teachers, 
the Indian Buddhist monks. The ideal itself had been very 
distinctly formulated by Indian thought long before, though 
the sculptor was forbidden by the orthodox canons of Indian 
Buddhism to exhibit to the gaze of the vulgar the holy mysteries 
revealed by spiritual insight. The real significance of these 
sculptures is that they, together with contemporary Indian 

133 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

works, show tlie process by which the philosophical teaching 
of Buddhism was made into a popular religious formula and 
adapted to the older traditions of Indo- Aryan divine worship. 
It is a very similar process to that which is revealed in early 
Christian art by another school of Hellenistic craftsmen, the 
Byzantine. 

One of the fundamental doctrines of Indo-Aryan faith, 
accepted by all religious sects, was that of Yoga, which was 
systematised by the Sanskrit grammarian Patanjali about 
the second century before Christ, but was even then a theory 
of great antiquity. Yoga in its literal sense of union was a 
system of religious meditation which connoted the Vedic 
doctrine of the Supreme Soul, for it was by means of Yoga 
that the soul of man attained to blissful, ecstatic communion 
with the Universal Spirit, and by Patanjali the word was used 
in the strict sense of communion with God. The early Bud- 
dhists accepted Yoga as a psychological exercise leading to 
true spiritual insight — the perception of the I^aw — though 
they rejected the Vedic implication of the Universal Spirit 
as God and the First Cause. 

But the idea of the personality of the Godhead was too 
deeply rooted in the Indian mind to be explained away by 
scholastic formularies. Every rule of the Buddhist Church 
was referred to the authority of the Buddha himself — not to 
a natural law scientifically explained — and to every relic of 
his life on earth enshrined in the stupas raised to his memory 
was ascribed miraculous powers which postulated his eternal 
existence in another sphere as the Protector and Ruler of the 
Sangha to whom the worship of the faithful was due. When, 
therefore, the Hellenistic sculptors in the first century before 
Christ began to represent the Buddha as the Deity they were 
simply expressing an idea which had doubtless been a cardinal 
belief of the Indian Buddhist Church for many generations. 

The synthesis of Indian religious ideas which formed the 
body of Buddhist doctrine contained two other cardinal 
beliefs, common to all schools of thought and deeply rooted 
in a remote antiquity. The first was the dogma of reincarna- 

134 



THE KUSHAN EMPIRE 

tion, which in the earHest days of the Buddhist propaganda 
had been explained to the people, by adaptations of the village 
folk-lore, in the tales of the Jatakas — ^the previous births of 
the Enlightened One — recounting the many deeds of self- 
sacrifice in lower planes of existence by which the Bodhi- 
sattva, or Buddha that was to be, prepared himself for the 
final victory over the powers of evil in the great conflict under 
the Bodhi Tree of Gay a. These Jatakas, as we have seen, 
were favourite subjects with Indian sculptors of Asoka's time, 
as no doubt they were with village story-tellers. Gradually 
the world of Bodhisattvas was greatly enlarged by the trans- 
formation into potential Buddhas of all the subordinate deities 
borrowed from the Vedic pantheon, and from the innumerable 
host of minor divinities which were the object of popular 
worship. 

It was to interpret these Indian ideas in terms of Hellenistic 
culture that the schools of Graeco- Roman sculpture were formed 
at Taksha-sila and Mathura about the beginning of the Christian 
era under the patronage of the Buddhist dynasties of North- 
western India. But Magadha, not Greece, was the spiritual 
centre of the Buddhist world, and the Hellenistic craftsmen 
in the service of the Baktrian and Kushan kings brought 
no new inspiration to Indian art. They merely supplied a 
local demand for images by adjusting the traditional divine 
ideal of Hellas to the mystical conceptions of the Indian yogi. 

An exactly similar process of assimilation and adaptation of 
popular religious notions had been going on for many centuries 
in the rival Brahmanical schools, ever since the philosophers 
of the Upanishads had formulated the doctrine of the One 
in Many. We can follow the process in the planning of the 
Indian village, in the allocation of sites to the greater and 
lesser divinities, and in their orientation. The ancient Aryan 
worship of the One God, in its different ritualistic aspects 
according to different positions of the sun, formed the symbolic 
framework into which both the idealism of the Upanishads and 
the primitive beliefs of the masses were fitted. The principal 
places in each of the four quarters of the village were assigned 

135 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

to the four greater Aryan Devas, or nature-spirits, who were 
worshipped as symbols of the four different aspects of the 
Sun-god. The entrances to their shrines faced east, west, north, 
or south, according to the quarter of the heavens in which the 
Deva resided. The lesser Devas, including those of non- 
Aryan derivation which from time to time were admitted into 
the Aryan pantheon, were given subordinate sites in order of 
precedence within or without the village boundaries, and the 
orientation of their shrines as prescribed in the Silpa-Sastras 
followed the intermediate points of the compass. In this 
way Brahmanical ritual made room for the admission of an 
infinite number of popular deities into its pantheistic scheme, 
while the fundamental doctrine of the Unity of the Godhead 
was symbolised by the shrine of the Supreme Deity with doors 
on all four sides overlooking the whole universe. 

Naturally every religious cult included in the Indo-Aryan 
synthesis assigned to the special deity it worshipped the 
position of the One Supreme, but the disputations of different 
sects and different philosophic schools gradually resolved con- 
clusions as to the nature of the Divine which made common 
ground for the majority of them. One of these was the Three- 
fold Aspect of the One, a theory which had its ritualistic 
symbols in the Sandhyd — or worship of the sun in the morning, 
noon, and evening — in the three Vedas, the three worlds, 
and in the three Paths by which the Deity could be approached 
— karma-marga, bhakti-marga, and jndna-marga, or the Path 
of Service, the Path of Devotion, and the Path of Intuitive 
Knowledge. 

Philosophically the theory was expressed by the pair of 
opposites, Birth and Death, or Creation and Destruction, linlced 
together by the mean or norm, lyif e or Preservation ; and theo- 
logically by the Three Aspects of the Supreme Ishvara, Brahma 
the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the Destroyer — 
a concept which was further expanded into a Trinity of Spirit 
{Purusha), Sat-Chit-Anandam, correlated with a Trinity of 
Matter, Sattvam-Rajas-Tamas, known as the three gunas. 

As the Buddhistic schools gradually elaborated a religious 
136 



THE KUSHAN EMPIRE 

ritual adapted to their philosophic teaching, they took for their 
Trinity the formula Buddha-Sangha-Dharma, called the Tri- 
ratna, or the Three Jewels. The Tri-ratna, we may take it, 
implied at first only a negation of Brahmanical theories of 
the divine ; but when the Buddha himself began to be wor- 
shipped as the Creator it followed as a matter of course that 
the Dharma, the I^aw of the Cosmos, stood for the concept of 
Eternal Bliss or the Eternal Spirit, while the Sangha, the 
Community, represented the life of the universe. It was then 
an easy transition from the abstract to the concrete to personify 
the Dharma as a deity with all the attributes of the Brah- 
manical Siva, and the Sangha as another with the attributes 
of Vishnu, the Preserver. 

It must not be supposed, however, that these subtle conver- 
sions or adaptations of orthodox Buddhist doctrine, which 
tended to .submerge the whole philosophy of Gautama in a 
flood of Brahmanical symbolism, met with the approval of 
all the leaders of the Sangha. There was always a strong party 
of intellectuals who realised the danger and strove to keep 
Buddhist ritual within the four corners of the Pali or Sanskrit 
canons which were the depository of the early traditions of 
the faith. Asoka himself, following the advice of the Great 
Teacher, had summoned periodical General Assemblies of the 
Sangha to discuss disputed points of doctrine and combat 
heretical interpretations of the I^aw ; and so long as Patali- 
putra retained its political supremacy the organisation of the 
Sangha was strong enough to resist the intrusion of heterodox 
Brahmanical theories. But the rise of Hellenistic influence 
and the transference of Buddhist political power in the North 
from Pataliputra to Taksha-sila combined to relax the discipline 
of the Sangha, so that about the beginning of the Christian 
era, when the Tartar or Kushan dynasty had carved out a 
powerful kingdom in the north-west provinces of Asoka's 
empire, a great schism appeared in the Buddhist Sangha. 

The popular party, headed apparently by Brahman members 
of the Sangha, detached itself from the primitive doctrines of 
the faith and under the name of the Mahay ana, or Great Vehicle, 

137 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

compiled a revised version of the Dharma in wliich the divinity 
of the Buddha was accepted as an orthodox behef, and Patan- 
jali's teaching of Yoga became incorporated in the Buddhist 
canons. 

As the name implied, the Mahayana doctrine admitted into 
its theistic scheme a vast number of Bodhisattvas, archangels, 
or saints, who were little more than the ancient popiilar 
divinities thinly disguised under Buddhist symbolism and 
nomenclature. The Mahayanist propaganda was also specially 
identified with the bhakti-marga, the way of winning Nirvana 
by the passionate devotion of self to the Buddhist ideal — a 
devotion which manifested itself in pious gifts and works of 
love rather than in the attainment of spiritual knowledge, 
which was the shortest way to the goal. Mahayanist ritual 
imposed no restriction upon the worship of images, so that 
the representation of the Divine Buddha and the innumerable 
host of Bodhisattvas gave unlimited scope for the art of the 
sculptor and painter, who became the most active propagand- 
ists of the Mahayana cult, in the same way as the royal 
craftsmen of Magadha had helped in the earlier development 
of Buddhist teaching — now known as the Hmaydna, or I^ittle 
Vehicle. 

From the first century before, and after the commencement 
of, the Christian era the progress of Mahayana Buddhism 
was identified with the growth of Kushan poHtical power in 
the north-west of India. We have already seen how the 
Turki tribes known as the Yueh-chi or Kushan had followed 
up others of the same race, the Sakas, in overrunning the 
Baktrian kingdom and putting an end to both Hellenistic and 
Parthian domination in that quarter. About the middle of 
the first century before Christ the Kushans had won supremacy 
over all the mixed population of the Indian borderland, and 
had established an empire which as a centre of Buddhist culture 
brought law and order into that unsettled region, and formed 
a half-way house between India and Rome on the one side 
and India and China on the other. 

Politically it was strong enough to protect India for the 
138 



THE KUSHAN EMPIRE 

time being from adventurous raids either from the west or 
the east ; at the same time it challenged the claims of the 
Andhras for the suzerainty of Northern India. It is unfor- 
tunate that the exact chronology of the Kushan dynasty is 
still a matter of dispute, but there can be no doubt that the 
new development of Buddhism which synchronised with the 
foundation of the Kushan Empire and was centred in its sphere 
of influence had the most far-reaching effect upon both Eastern 
and Western religion. The Mongolian connections of the 
Kushan people gave an immense impetus to Buddhist propa- 
ganda in China, and at the same time the Hellenistic culture 
of Western Asia imbibed the Buddhist idealism which so deeply 
impressed the ritual and folk-lore of Christianity. 

At the summit of its power the Kushan dynasty held under 
its suzerainty Kashmir, the Panjab, and probably the whole 
of Northern India as far east as Benares and as far south as 
the Vindhya Mountains. To the north of the Himalayas it 
wrested from Mongolian rule the provinces of Central Asia 
now known as Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan. In Western 
Asia its dominions extended to the borders of Parthia and 
Persia, thus including Sogdiana, Baktriana and Ariana, or 
Bukhara and Afghanistan. 

When the Kushans had completed the conquest of North- 
western India the centre of their political power naturally 
shifted from Kabul to Purushapura, the modern Peshawar, 
and Taksha-sila became the university capital of Mahayana 
Buddhism. The two names which stand out most conspicu- 
ously in the somewhat obscure records of the time are those 
of Kanishka, the emperor who emulated Asoka's passionate 
devotion to the Dharma, and the Brahman monk Nagarjuna, 
whom Indian tradition recognises as the great exponent of 
the Mahayana doctrine. Whether they were contemporary 
or not, we may take it that they were teachers, rather than 
originators, of the religious movements of their times. 

There are definite chronological data which help to establish 
the close intercourse betvv^een India and the Graeco- Roman 
world at this eventful period. Dion Cassius says that Augustus 

139 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

received many embassies from Indian kings sent to confirm 
treaties of alliance, and bringing with them as presents tigers 
and other animals which Romans saw for the first time. The 
same author relates that an Indian named Zarmaros " burned 
himself, after the manner of his country, on a funeral pile, in 
presence of Augustus and the Athenians." ^ Strabo records 
the same or a similar incident when Augustus, circa 24 B.C., 
received at Samos an embassy from an Indian king, apparently 
of one of the Pandyan dynasties of the South, observing that 
in olden days another Indian sophist named Kalanos had 
" exhibited a similar spectacle in presence of Alexander." ^ 

It was the great development of trade between India and 
the West, both by sea and land, in the palmy days of the 
Roman Empire which was the direct cause of the frequent 
diplomatic conversations between the courts of Indian kings 
and Rome. The luxurious habits of cosmopolitan Rome 
created an enormous demand for the perfumes, unguents, and 
spices of the Bast, as well as for precious stones of Southern 
India, particularly the much-prized beryl. Fantastic prices 
were paid in Rome for the gorgeous silks, brocades, cloth of 
gold, and fine muslins for which the weavers of India were 
famous, and Pliny condemned the extravagance which yearly 
drained the Roman Empire of a hundred million sesterces 
(about one million sterling), paid for these luxuries. And 
while the nobility of Rome lavished their wealth on Oriental 
fashions, the wild beasts of India, such as the tiger, cheetah, 
and elephant, brought as presents by Indian ambassadors, 
assisted in the gladiatorial shows which amused the Roman 
populace. 

It would, however, be wrong to conclude that the mercantile 
relations which helped to fill the royal treasuries of India with 
Roman gold and to crowd the bazars of Indian commercial 
cities with foreign traders had any deep or abiding influence 
upon Indian culture or upon the religious movements of the 
times. Mahayana Buddhism, though its propaganda owed 

1 MacCrindle's Ancient India, vol. vi, p. 212, 

2 Ibid., vol. vi, p. 10. 
140 



I 



THE KUSHAN EMPIRE 

so much to the influence of the Kushan kings, was intellectually 
and spiritually Indian as much as the Buddha's original teach- 
ing had been. Gandharan sculpture exhibits the influence of 
India upon the artistic thought of Hellenism, analogous to 
that which Oriental fashions exercised upon the contemporary 
social life of the capital of the Roman Empire. 

The spirit of bhakti which moved the people of the Indian 
borderlands went over to the early Christian churches in 
Western Asia, and in Byzantium, as in Gandhara, quickened 
into a new life of fervent piety the dry bones of Graeco-Roman 
art. It was only superficially and externally that the Maha- 
yana school, centred in Taksha-sila, was related to Hellenistic 
culture. Spiritually it derived from the same impulse which 
caused the revolt of Buddhism against the Vedic theory of 
sacrifice and, in later times, led to the revival of Brahmanism. 
It was a popular protest against the teaching which made 
religion the exclusive property of a learned clique, instead of 
the common spiritual heritage of the people. Nagarjuna was 
the lyuther of Buddhism, the apostle of the bhakti-marga, 
who would find means of expression for the deep-seated religious 
instincts of the masses through the way of devotion to the 
Divine Teacher, rather than through the dry agnostic philo- 
sophy of the Hinayana schools. The latter, having accom- 
plished the Buddha's mission of freeing the people's soul, 
fast bound by the chains of sacerdotal superstitions, was too 
cold and austere to satisfy the passionate and emotional nature 
of Southern races. 

The name Mahayana, the Great Vehicle, by which the new 
movement distinguished itself, seems to imply that there was 
a certain exclusiveness, perhaps of racial feeling, in the admini- 
stration of the early Buddhist Sangha — a feeling expressed 
in the Pali canons by the frequent qualification of Buddhist 
virtues by the term ' Aryan.' There is no ground for asserting 
that Mahayana Buddhism was in its origin a non- Aryan cult, 
but no doubt the influx of non-Aryans into Northern India 
gave it much greater strength and helped to spread its teaching 
over the greater part of Asia. Southern India then became 

141 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the great stronghold of the Hinayana school, just as in later 
times it became the last defence of Aryan India against the 
devastating hosts of Islam. 

The dynastic history of the Kushan Empire, under whose 
aegis Mahayana Buddhism flourished, affords many parallels 
with that of the Mauryan Empire — so much so that popular 
Indian and Chinese legends seem often to confuse the per- 
sonalities of Asoka and Kanishka, The period of its greatest 
power in Northern India — or approximately from the middle 
of the first century before Christ to the beginning of the third 
century a.d. — nearly follows the fortunes of the Andhra 
dynasty in the South. In Europe it includes the time from 
the rise of Julius Caesar and the furthest extension of 
the Roman Empire eastward under Trajan to the beginning 
of its fall under his degenerate successors Caracalla and 
Elagabalus. 

Kadphises the First and Second were apparently the two 
military leaders whose swords helped to accomplish what 
Chandragupta and Bindusara had done for the Mauryan 
dynasty, first by the overthrow of Baktrian and Parthian 
rule in North-western India, next by checking the advance of 
the powerful Chinese armies towards the west, and afterwards 
by extending their conquest to the east of the Indus. Their 
achievements, however, only live in the records afforded by 
the copper, silver, and gold coins, mostly imitations of those 
of the Roman Empire, which they struck to assist the increasing 
trade between India and the West, which brought rich toll 
to their treasuries. So far as is known they took no interest 
in the great religious movements of the time. The coins of 
Kadphises II seem to show that he adhered to the Brahmanical 
school of which the worship of Siva was the chief cult. 

Kanishka, according to Buddhist tradition, was also under 
the influence of orthodox Brahmanism before he became an 
enthusiastic patron of the Sangha. lyike Asoka, the first years 
of his reign ^ were spent in extending the boundaries of his 

^ The year of Kanishka' s accession or coronation is dated by some scholars 
58 B.C., and by others at various dates down to a.d. 278. 
142 



THE KUSHAN EMPIRE 

empire by conquests through which he opened up closer 
communication with China on the one side, and with the 
Roman Empire on the other. It is said that Kanishka, when 
he began to interest himself in Buddhist teaching, was confused 
by the wide divergences between the doctrines of different 
schools, and the chief event of his reign recorded in Buddhist 
chronicles is a General Assembly of the Sangha convened by 
the Kushan Emperor to settle the strife between the contending 
sects. The meeting-place was Kundalavana, a monastery in 
Kashmir, near which Kanishka frequently held his court. 
It was attended by five hundred monks, who made an exhaus- 
tive examination of authoritative Buddhist literature and 
compiled elaborate commentaries thereon, including a work 
called the Mahdvibhdshd, which was intended to form an 
authorised version of Buddhist philosophical systems. The 
canons of the faith, as stated by the delegates of the assembly, 
were inscribed on copper plates and deposited in a great 
stupa built by Kanishka's order, near Srinagar, the exact 
site of which is at present unknown. The Mahdvibhdshd 
still exists in a Chinese version, but the contents of it are not 
yet known to Western scholars, so that the conclusions of 
Kanishka's assembly are still a matter of conjecture. 

Judging by the numerous coins of Kanishka's reign it 
would appear probable that, though celebrated in Buddhist 
tradition as a liberal patron of the Sangha, the Emperor, 
like his great Mogul successor, Akbar, really imbibed the true 
spirit of Indo-Aryan kingship and gave impartial encourage- 
ment to all religious teaching, including that of Zarathushtra 
and of various Brahmanical sects ; but as a matter of policy 
and inclination he bestowed a larger share of State patronage 
upon the Buddhist community, to which the majority of his 
subjects probably belonged. Among the memorials of his 
reign which existed for many centuries afterwards were a great 
stupa, thirteen stories in height, and a splendid monastery 
which he built near his winter capital, Purushapura. 

It was no doubt owing to Kanishka's Turki descent that 
Taksha-sila and other famous seats of Indian learning now 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

began to be the resort of crowds of students from the Far 
East, who helped to spread the message of the Good lyaw 
over the whole of the Chinese Empire and eventually, when 
Brahmanism began to reassert its spiritual and political 
supremacy in India, made it the seat of the Indian Patriarch 
of Mahayanist Buddhism. If popular legends can be trusted, 
Kanishka's devotion to the Dharma did not, as in Asoka's 
case, lead him to give up a career of military conquest and to 
strive for the goal of the Aryan Eightfold Path. According 
to these legends Kanishka wearied all his subjects by his 
continu.al aggressive campaigns and insatiable lust for world- 
dominion, so that in the end the opportunity of the Emperor's 
sudden illness was seized to smother him in bed with his own 
quilt. This is one of the many recorded instances of the fate 
which overtook Indian sovereigns who offended against the 
traditions of Indo-Aryan constitutional government. 

Kanishka is believed to have reigned between twenty-four 
and thirty years. Of his three successors, Vasishka, Huvishka, 
and Vasudeva, the first is a name known only from a few inscrip- 
tions. Huvishka founded a new Kushan capital in Kashmir, 
known as Hushkapura, inside the Baramula Pass, and estab- 
lished Buddhist monasteries close by which flourished at the time 
of Hiuen-Tsang's visit in the seventh century. There is some 
ground for believing that Huvishka built a shrine in front of the 
Bodhi Tree at Gay a to replace one erected by Asoka. The exist- 
ing temple with its Vishnu sikhara may be Huvishka's work, or a 
later reproduction of it. Vasudeva, according to some archaeo- 
logists, reigned about a.d. 33 ; others put his reign a century 
and a half later. Mr Vincent Smith, apparently overlooking the 
difference in the dates of inscriptions, would identify Vasishka 
with Vasudeva, as both names are synonyms of Vishnu, the 
former with Turki and the latter with Sanskrit spelling. 

Vasishka's inscriptions date from the twenty-fourth to the 
twenty-eighth years of the Vikrama era,i while Vasudeva's 
range from the seventy-fourth to the ninety-eighth years 
of the same. 2 The adoption of one of Vishnu's synonyms 

^ Began 58 B.C. ^ Barnett's Antiquities of India, pp. 42-43. 

144 




9. Tempi,e of Bodh-Gaya, Restored 



144 



THE KUSHAN EMPIRE 

as a royal title was very usual and meant nothing more than 
the assertion of sovereignty over Aryavarta, for every monarch, 
according to the Indo- Aryan tradition of government, became 
Vishnu's vicegerent on earth by virtue of his consecration 
as king, quite irrespective of his race or sectarian predilections. 
It might therefore be expected that more than one of the 
Kushan line followed this Indo- Aryan custom, and the fact of 
their having done so would by no means prove that they were 
not good Buddhists, for the Buddha as the Divine Protector 
of the Sangha was Vishnu — regarded not as the ' god ' of a 
Hindu sect but as a cosmic principle recognised by all schools 
of Indian philosophy. The understanding of this fundamental 
fact will obviate many misconceptions of Indian history. 

The important fact which emerges from the fragmentary 
historical data of the Kushan Empire is that both in religion 
and in principles of government the Turki monarchs were, like 
the greatest of the Mogul dynasty, thoroughly Aryanised, 
and could not therefore have regarded themselves as despotic 
and irresponsible rulers of a conquered people. And to this 
cause the historian should not hesitate to ascribe the fact 
that Kanishka's line maintained an unbroken supremacy in 
Northern India for nearly three centuries. 

While Indo- Aryan culture was thus spreading itself over the 
highlands of Western and Central Asia it was also penetrating 
into the southern regions of the continent by way of sea. The 
development of India's maritime trade brought her into close 
connection with Burma, Siam, Java, and Kambodia, and ac- 
cording to local traditions the first century of the Christian 
era saw the beginning of those great colonising enterprises 
which subsequently built up the magnificent monuments of 
Indo- Aryan civilisation which now remain in Prambanam and 
Borobudur in Java, and near to the deserted capitals of the 
kings of Kambodia. As in Southern India and Ceylon, it was 
Brahmanical teaching which preceded and prepared the way 
for the spread of Buddhistic doctrine. 

That Mahayana Buddhism was a revolt against the austerity 
of the earlier Buddhist schools is indicated by all the monu- 

K 145 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

ments of the Kushan period in India. The sculptors of the 
Gandharan monasteries revelled in a profuse elaboration of 
statuary and ornament, and their influence was soon felt in 
the architecture of the Hinayana schools, which gradually 
lost the grave simplicity and restraint of its earlier style and 
began to imitate the rich carving and elaborate symbolism 
of the more popular cult. The principal artistic monuments 
of the period now remaining, outside those of the Gandhara 
school, are the temple of Bodh-Gaya, the later sculptures of 
Amaravati, the Nasik monasteries and some of the college 
halls and chapels which occupy the centre of Siva's bow at 
Ajanta,^ and the great Assembly Hall at Kanheri, near 
Bombay. There are besides numerous smaller rock-cut 
assembly halls and monasteries in other parts of India. 
Geographically, however, most of these were outside the 
Kushan dominions, and the work of Indian craftsmen who 
owe nothing to Hellenistic art traditions. They nearly all 
come within the territory of the later Andhra kings, of whose 
personality even less is known than of that of the contempo- 
rary Kushan rulers. These artistic records prove that during 
this period, though the Brahman intellect was slowly re- 
shaping the doctrines of Buddhism, the wonderful organisation 
of the Sangha which Asoka had built up maintained sufficient 
political power both in Northern India and the Dekhan to 
appropriate the lion's share of State patronage and prevent 
the Brahmans outside the Sangha from asserting their priestly 
authority. 

1 See Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India, by the author, p. 143 
(Murray, 1915). 



146 



CHAPTER X 

THE GUPTA EMPIRE 

ABOUT a century after the extinction of the Kushan 
and Andhra dynasties the centre of political interest 
» is again shifted to Pataliputra, and the great Gupta 
era, characterised by Western writers as the period of Hindu 
or Brahmanical revival, begins. The intervening century, 
from about a.d. 220 to 320, is an obscure period of which 
practically nothing is known except that the Kushan and 
Andhra Empires collapsed and apparently broke up into a 
number of smaller states ruled by rajas who were perhaps 
contented with the happiness of their subjects and had no 
ambition to live in history as mighty war-lords. In any case 
their miUtary exploits were not considerable enough to leave 
an impression upon Indian history. 

It is well to consider at the outset how far the description 
of the Gupta era as the beginning of a Brahmanical reaction 
is an accurate analysis of the psychological and political 
changes which then took place in India. The principal evi- 
dence upon which Oriental scholars have relied is that of the 
epigraphical records, which show that until the second or 
third century a.d. practically all royal and private benevolences 
were bestowed upon Jain and Buddhist institutions, and that 
patronage of Brahmans, as such, and of Brahmanical deities 
did not begin until after that time. It might therefore be 
assumed that the effect of Asoka's propaganda was to reduce 
Brahman influence to a very low ebb for many centuries, and 
that it was not until the beginning of the Gupta era that the 
Brahmans regained the position they had held as exponents 
of Indo-Aryan culture. 

But on the other hand the artistic records which explain 

147 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and amplify the epigraphical evidence show very clearly that 
this is a quite untrue reading of Indian history. Through- 
out the whole of this period Brahman influence was steadily 
growing, intellectually, socially, and politically. Even many 
of the Buddha's disciples were Brahmans who changed their 
names upon initiation as members of the Sangha, in the same 
way as Christians dropped their pagan names upon baptism. 
Already in Asoka's time the Brahmans had probably captured 
the whole machinery of the Sangha as effectually as in modern 
times they have controlled the inner working of British depart- 
mental machinery. A similar situation obtained in the world 
of religious thought represented by Brahmanism. Brahmanical 
or Vedic sacrificial ritual was transformed or swept away, but 
the ideas behind it remained as the nucleus of a new spiritual 
growth. The Vedic gods were pressed into the service of the 
Sangha and made subordinate to the divine Buddha, or under 
other names joined the great assembly of Buddhist saints, 
the Buddhas that were to be ; but the nature-powers they 
represented were worshipped as before, and the philosophical 
concepts connected with them were accepted as the basis of 
Buddhistic systems. 

And during all this time Brahmanism retained its indepen- 
dent existence as a side channel of the great stream of popular 
religion, and within its forest asrams the basic ideas which 
formed the two great divisions of modern Hinduism were 
slowly maturing. It was after the disinterested labours of 
Brahman scholars in this period of seclusion had thoroughly 
examined the foundations of Vedic religion, and after the 
coarse materialism of Vedic ritual had been purged of its 
grossness by Buddhist idealism, that the religion of the Vedas 
reunited with the main current of Indo-Aryan beliefs, and the 
Brahmans resumed their natural position as the interpreters 
of Indo-Aryan religion, as distinguished from the dogmas of 
the Buddhist and Jain orders. Buddliism, deprived of the 
intellectual support of the Aryan aristocracy, then gradually 
relapsed into the position it had held at the beginning. It 
became one of the many sects of Hinduism instead of a syn- 
148 



THE GUPTA EMPIRE 

thesis of all of them, and finally in India attained the goal of 
Pan-Nirvana by being merged in the ocean of Indian thought. 

The movement which the Gupta era ushered in was, however, 
more of a national revival, or a reassertion of Aryan intellectual 
and political supremacy, than a religious one. It had its 
centre of inspiration in a federation of the pure-blooded Aryan 
clans, among them the Ivichchavi, whose nobility had been 
known in the days of the Buddha as closely connected with 
the kings of Magadha, and afterwards with the imperial 
Maury an line, and with another dynasty in Nepal. It was a 
raja of Pataliputra, bearing the proud name of Chandra- 
gupta, and married to a lyichchavi princess, Kumara Devi, who 
about A.D. 308 roused the Aryan clans, like his great pre- 
decessor of the same name, to a holy war in defence of Arya- 
varta. 

There was, no doubt, good reason why such an appeal 
should meet with an enthusiastic response from the Kshatriya 
nobility, and why the military ardour which it evoked should 
connote hostility to the Buddhist Sangha, especially to the 
Mahayanist movement which had flourished so greatly under 
the patronage of the neighbouring Kushan emperors. 

Though the Kushans, as we have seen, had adopted at 
least the external forms of Aryan religion and political institu- 
tions, it was hardly likely that the Indo-Aryan aristocracy 
had ever reconciled itself to the increase of Turki political 
domination or to the intrusion of so many foreigners unfamiliar 
with Indo-Aryan traditions into Indian society. Indian 
Buddhism had always been bound up with the traditions of 
Aryan social life and had never been entirely successful in 
obliterating the pride of race which made ' Aryan ' virtue a 
state of ethical perfection not to be reached in their present 
life by men of alien blood. 

Neither had the Sangha's organisation proved its efficiency 
for carrying out the Buddha's programme for the regeneration 
of human nature. Like all powerful religious organisations 
endowed by the State it tended to create vested interests and 
monopolies, the preservation of which became of more account 

149 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

than the reaUsation of the moral and spiritual aims of the 
Great Teacher, That religious organisations like the Sangha 
had always been prone to meddle in political matters outside 
their jurisdiction is shown by the law laid down in the Kautiliya- 
artha-Sdstra forbidding the entry of any but local co-operative 
guilds into the villages of the Mauryan Empire. It is easy 
to understand that when this rule was relaxed in favour 
of the Sangha by zealous Buddhist propagandists like Asoka 
and Kanishka, innumerable ways would be found for tyrannis- 
ing over those who did not belong to the Order. And while 
Buddhist tyranny was not more easy to bear than that of the 
Brahmans, the Buddhist monks were no less adept in fostering 
popular superstitions for the benefit of themselves and their 
Order than the priests of the Vedic sacrifices had been. 

The cult of rehc worship developed a ritual as elaborate as 
that of Vedic times, and popular belief in the miractilous was 
exploited to promote lavish expenditure on the building of 
stupas and monasteries for the safe custody of a supposititious 
eyelash, tooth, or toe-nail of the Blessed One, or of the ashes 
of a Buddliist saint. 

Nor did the Good lyaw of love and self-control preached by 
the Sangha bring any nearer the era of universal peace which 
had been Asoka's dream. Buddhist monarchs went to war 
for the possession of a precious relic as eagerly as the Kshatriya 
kings of Vedic India followed the sacrificial horse sent out as 
a challenge to their neighbours. It was only when a strong 
central government like that of the Kushan and Andhra 
dynasties existed that India enjoyed a period of prolonged 
peace. And while the powerful and wealthy organisation of 
the Sangha was of no avail for keeping the foreign invader 
off the sacred soil of Aryavarta, a monastic life was held in so 
high esteem and offered so many attractions to Kshatriya 
youth that the fighting strength of Aryavarta was becoming 
dangerously weakened, and the resources of the State needed 
for national defence were absorbed by the thousands of 
monasteries filled with the wearers of the yellow robe. 

None would be more conscious of the political and social 
150 



I 



THE GUPTA EMPIRE 

dangers which threatened Indo-Aryan supremacy in India 
than the leaders of those Aryan clans which six and a half 
centuries before had ans.vered Chandragupta Maurya's call 
to arms. It was among these Aryan clans that the Maury an 
Emperor's successor, the first of the Gupta Une, found strong 
and steadfast allies. In accordance with Kshatriya tradition 
his first effort was to put an end to the turmoil into which 
Aryavarta had fallen through the break-up of the Kushan 
and Andhra Empires by asserting the right of government 
exercised by the Aryan fighting class from time immemorial. 
It was a right which was necessarily maintained by the sword, 
though founded upon the principles of justice and consideration 
for the general good which were accepted by the whole Aryan 
community and embodied in the codes of Indo-Aryan law and 
tradition which every Kshatriya prince learned by heart and 
was taught to regard as the canonical laws of his caste. A 
war conducted on these principles could never be a brutal 
war of spoliation or extermination. It was rather the uphold- 
ing of the strong arm of universal law by Vishnu's vicegerent 
on earth and the assertion of the principle that right is might. 

About twelve years after his marriage with the lyichchavi 
princess and the proclamation of this holy war, Chandragupta, 
either by voluntary alliances or by force of arms, had won the 
overlordship of a great part of the valley of the Ganges and 
Jumna, including the ancient kingdom of Ajodhya, a name 
enshrined in Aryan memory as the home of the Kshatriya hero 
Rama and his beloved queen Sita, the ideal wife of Aryan 
tradition. 

In the beginning of a.d. 320 Chandragupta was crowned as 
King of Kings, a date thereafter reckoned as the beginning of 
the great Gupta era. To celebrate the event he struck coins 
inscribed with his own name, that of his queen, Kumara Devi, 
and of the lyichchavi clan of which he was the chief. 

It is wholly misleading to describe the Gupta era as a Hindu 
or Brahmanical reaction. It was rather an Aryan revival, 
for it was the effort of the Aryan Kshatriyas, aided by the 
Aryan Brahmans, to restore the political and spiritual supre- 

151 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

macy of the Indo-Aryan race in Aryavarta. The Brahmans 
were not opposing the Buddhism of which the Aryan prince 
Siddhartha was the exponent, for they had been the foremost 
in assimilating and adapting it to the fundamental doctrines 
of orthodox Indo-Aryan religion. It was against the Sangha 
of the fourth century a.d., under Turki, Parthian, and Scythian 
leadership, with the superstitious corruptions and abuses which 
it propagated, that the better sense of the Indo-Aryan intellect 
revolted. From the religious standpoint it was a revival 
analogous to that which the prince of the Aryan clan, Sakya 
Muni, had himself inspired, for it was a reawakening of the 
profound spiritual instinct of the Aryan race which found 
expression in a great renaissance of Aryan poetry, drama, and 
art, Chandragupta reigned about fifteen years after his con- 
secration as King of Kings, when his mantle as the champion 
of Aryan India fell upon his son Samudragupta, who as 
Yuva-raja had attained high proficiency in all the culture of 
an Aryan prince. 

Very soon after his accession, circa a.d. 335, Samudragupta 
appears to have opened the victorious campaign for the 
suzerainty of Aryavarta which his court poet Harishena 
celebrated in Sanskrit verses inscribed upon one of the imperial 
standards of Asoka which now stands in the fort at Allahabad. 
Aryavarta at that time was a term including all the lands 
south of the Vindhya Mountains which were the scene of 
Rama's exploits, as well as Hindustan, the Aryavarta of the 
Mahabharata. The intention of Samudragupta's campaign 
was thus to restore in his own person the supremacy of the 
Maury an dynasty at the height of its glory under Asoka. 
The feeling of racial antagonism which prompted Samudra- 
gupta and his allies is shown in the different treatment accorded 
to the rajas of the North — ^the Turki, Parthian, and other non- 
Aryan dynasties which had established themselves under the 
Kushan suzerainty — and the Indo-Aryan states in the North 
and South whose government was either monarchical, oligarchic, 
or republican. The former were " forcibly rooted out " and 
t.heir territories annexed to Samudragupta's own raj ; but the 
152 



THE GUPTA EMPIRE 

latter having acknowledged Samudragupta's suzerainty and 
paid the customary tribute remained in enjoyment of their 
former self-elected or hereditary forms of government. 

Samudragupta appears to have changed his capital from 
Pataliputra to Ajodhya, and his southern campaign was 
apparently the traditional Kshatriya military pilgrimage — 
accompanied by the ritual of the sacrificial horse — ^to the 
places hallowed in Aryan memory by Rama's and Sita's 
wanderings in the forest, and by the victorious progress of 
Rama's army marching to the rescue of his queen when she 
was abducted by Dravidian pirates and carried off to their 
stronghold in Ceylon. Marching along the eastern road 
through Orissa, or Kalinga, Samudragupta first obtained the 
submission of the king of that region and then entered the 
districts between the Krishna and Godavari rivers, passing 
the sacred hill of Chitrakuta and the country famed as the 
scene of Rama's exile. Having forced his way further south 
to Kanchi, or Conjeveram, and conquered the local kings 
who opposed him, he crossed over the southern end of the 
Indian continent and returned in triumph to his capital 
through the western districts of the Dekhan. 

There the Vedic rite of Asvamedha was completed in solemn 
state by the sacrifice of the horse which had led Samudragupta's 
victorious march, and by the lavish distribution of the rich 
spoils he had won. One of the gold medals struck by Samudra- 
gupta to celebrate the event, with a representation of the horse 
and sacrificial altar, is in the British Museum, and the carved 
stone horse with an inscription on it which now stands at 
the entrance to the Lucknow Museum may be another memorial 
of his triumph. 

The Buddhist chronicles of Ceylon throw interesting light 
upon the history of the Gupta era. They both explain why 
Samudragupta refrained from any attempt to repeat Rama's 
final exploit by the conquest of Ceylon, and prove that there 
was no narrow sectarian feeling in the Aryan revival which 
the Gupta era inaugurated. Ceylon at that time was practi- 
cally a part of Aryan India. Its dynasty was of Indo-Aryan 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

not Dravidian descent, and Hinayana Buddhism, which 
flourished there, was representative of the older Aryan culture 
of Asoka's time. There was therefore no feeling of racial 
or religious antagonism between Ceylon and the Aryans of 
Northern India. At the beginning of Samudragupta's reign 
Meghavarna, the reigning King of Ceylon, had despatched a 
mission with costly presents which had established cordial 
relations between the two rulers and had led to the fulfilment 
of Meghavarna's desire to found a monastery near the Bodhi 
Tree at Gaya for the benefit of Sinhalese students and pilgrims. 
The toleration shown by Samudragupta and his Brahman 
advisers in allowing a splendid Buddhist abbey, richly endowed, 
to be given a place of honour in his territory proves that the 
so-called Brahmanical reaction was not inspired by narrow 
sectarian feelings. 

Samudragupta by his conquests considerably enlarged the 
empire of the Guptas and fulfilled his father's mission by 
releasing Aryavarta from foreign domination and reasserting 
the principle of Kshatriya or Indo- Aryan hegemony over the 
whole of India ; though apparently he did not maintain more 
than a nominal suzerainty as King of Kings over the Dekhan 
and Southern India after his return from his great southern 
campaign. The limits of the Kushan Empire were again 
pushed back to the Indus, and the influence of Mongolian and 
Hellenistic culture which Kanishka had introduced into India 
was superseded by a great revival of Sanskrit learning under 
the patronage of the Gupta emperors. 

Sanskrit, the classical language of Brahman and Kshatriyan 
culture, though it had long ceased to be a vernacular even 
among the Indo- Aryan classes who called themselves ' pure,' 
and though as an official literary language it had been super- 
seded at many Buddhist courts and seats of learning by Pali 
and local dialects, had always remained the vehicle by which 
the religion and philosophy of the Vedas and the early tradi- 
tions of Aryan culture had been handed down from one genera- 
tion to another by Brahman gurus in their asrams and in the 
courts of old-fashioned rajas who stood aloof from popular 

154 




lO. TrAVEI,I<ERS or PII^GRIMS WSTENING to A VlI<I,AGE KaTHAK 



154 



THE GUPTA EMPIRE 

religious movements. Sanskrit, though it might be called the 
Brahmanical language, was also that in which every pure- 
blooded Aryan prince, even a disciple of Gautama, would be 
instructed in the duties of his position. Sanskrit, therefore, 
naturally was the official language of the Gupta imperial 
court, instead of Pali, Greek, or Turki, and the linguistic 
medium through which the Indo-Aryan revival found ex- 
pression. 

The Brahman guru emerged from the obscurity of his forest 
hermitage and basking once more in the sunshine of imperial 
favour became the leader of the new national movement in 
the place of the Buddhist bhikku, whose influence had waned 
through the frequent abuse of his authority and popular 
dislike of the foreigner. The village kathaks no longer touched 
popular sentiment by stories of the Buddha's self-sacrifice and 
divine compassion, but found ready listeners to praises of the 
mighty Kshatriya then seated on Rama's throne at Ajodhya, 
who had revived the glorious traditions of the Aryan race. 
The Indo-Aryan revival of the Gupta period was distinguished 
from the Buddhist propaganda of Asoka's time by being based 
upon aristocratic rather than democratic sentiment, and in 
being a patriotic rather than a religious movement. 

It is true that Brahman leaders took the opportunity to 
propagate their religious teaching by giving the Bhagavad GUd, 
' The Song of the Blessed One,' a setting in the great Aryan 
epic, the Mahabharata ; but this seems to show that it was 
put forward as an appeal to the national feeling of Aryavarta 
rather than as a new religious message. It was a call to 
Kshatriya youth to fulfil their religious duties by warlike 
deeds rather than by meditation in the seclusion of the monas- 
tery. Krishna, the military leader and man of action, who 
had delivered his people from the tyrant's yoke and destroyed 
the demons who were ravaging the land — the Divine Cowherd, 
beloved of the village folk — would point the way to mukti 
for every one by simple devotion to duty, instead of Gautama, 
the Sakya ascetic whose pietism would emasculate the manhood 
of Aryavarta in the monastic cell. "He that performeth a 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

dutiful action independently of the fruit of action, he is an 
ascetic, he is a yogi " {Bhagavad Git a, VI, i). 

The revival of Brahmanism in the form of the Vishnu cult 
was an inevitable psychological reaction after the many 
centuries in which monasticism had been preached as the 
only door by which the highest spiritual perfection could be 
reached. The Gupta era was the beginning of an Indo-Aryan 
renaissance. Yet it would be easy to exaggerate the direct 
influence of the Gupta court upon the religious sentiment of 
the people. None of the Guptas were zealous religious enthu- 
siasts like Asoka. They were liberal patrons of Brahmanical 
learning, but they did not lay hands upon the endowments 
of the Buddhist Sangha or attempt to break up its powerful 
organisation. Neither did they countenance any persecution 
of the followers of Gautama. The capital of the Gupta 
emperors became the centre of Brahmanical culture, but 
the masses followed the religious traditions of their fore- 
fathers, and Buddhist and Jain monasteries continued to 
be public schools and universities for the greater part of 
India. 

The decline of Buddhism and its final disappearance from 
India as a separate religious cult were the consequence of a 
gradual process of intellectual absorption, rather than the 
result of any outside pressure. The whole logical position of 
Sakya Muni's philosophy was shifted and brought closely into 
line with that of the Brahmanical schools directly the Buddha 
himself was recognised as the absolute Good — or as a personal 
God — and there is no doubt that this became the authorised 
teaching of the Sangha very soon after his death. The develop- 
ment of Mahayana teaching made the difference between 
Buddhism and Brahmanism no greater than that which 
separated one Brahmanical school from another, and though 
the Sangha as an organisation remained in India until it was 
finally broken up in the Muhammadan invasions, its intel- 
lectual supremacy was already superseded in the beginning 
of the Gupta era by the new schools of Kshatriya and Brahman 
philosophy. 

156 



THE GUPTA EMPIRE 

In India militarism has always been the agent rather than 
the originator of social and political revolutions, and it was 
the Brahman intellect more than the Kshatriya sword which 
led to the downfall of the Buddhist Sangha. With the en- 
couragement of the Gupta emperors their Brahman statesmen 
set to work to take popular education out of the hands of 
Buddhist monks by compiling into one great religious and 
moral code the traditions of Indo-Aryan history, as recorded 
by the bards of the Aryan clans, the court poets and gurus, 
and the teachers of Brahman asrams. This noble epic in 
stately Sanskrit slokas, under the name of the Mahabharata, 
the story of the Great War, containing the essence of Kshatriya 
polity, philosophy, and religious doctrine, was an encyclopaedia 
of hero-worship and a moral text-book which gave abundant 
material for a system of popular education. The sddhu and 
sannydsin carried it throughout the length and breadth of 
India, as the bhikkus of the Sangha had formerly spread the 
message of the Buddha. Both in the original Sanskrit text 
and in vernacular translations it played the same part in 
moulding Indian character and in forming the synthesis of 
thought called ' Hinduism ' as the Old and New Testaments 
have done in Christianity and the Quran in Islam. 

The fact that the Mahabharata is the same in Bengal and 
in Southern India, in the Panjab and throughout the Dekhan, 
shows that it was carefully edited with a set purpose and is 
not, as the superficial reader might imagine, a corpus of 
Brahmanical literature strung together haphazard in different 
periods of time. The purpose of the Mahabharata, as edited 
by the Brahman scholars of the Gupta court, is well described 
by a Western writer who had rare insight into the psychology 
of Indian history : " The foreign reader, taking it up as 
sympathetic reader merely and not as scholar, is at once 
struck by two features ; in the first place, its unity in com- 
plexity ; and, in the second, its constant effort to impress on 
its hearers the idea of a single centralised India with an heroic 
tradition of her own as formative and uniting impulse. It is 
in good sooth a monarch's dream of an imperial race. The 

157 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Gupta Emperor of Pataliputra who commissioned the last 
recension of the great work was as conscious as Asoka before 
him or Akbar after of making to his people the magic statement, 
' India is one.' " ^ 

The recension of the Mahabharata is only one of the great 
works attributed to the Brahman pandits of the Gupta court. 
The Ramayana in its present form seems to be the ancient 
legend of Rama's exploits retold by the poets who sang the 
praises of Samudragupta's triumphal progress in the footsteps 
of the Aryan hero. The Vishnu and some of the other Puranas 
probably belong to the same period, while tradition also refers 
to the Gupta age the classics of the Indian drama, Sakuntala 
and other works of Kalidasa. 

It is not certain whether Samudragupta in addition to his 
military achievements took the lead in promoting this great 
renaissance of Sanskrit literature. Indian romance and legend 
refer it vaguely to Vikramaditya — ' the God-like Hero ' — a 
title which was assumed by Samudragupta's son and successor, 
Chandragupta II. But Harishena, who composed the inscrip- 
tion on the Allahabad pillar, refers to Samudragupta's accom- 
plishments as a poet and musician, and one of the gold coins 
of his reign preserved in the British Museum shows the 
Emperor seated on a throne playing the vina, or Indian lute ; 
so it would not be rash to date the beginning of the Sanskrit 
renaissance under the Guptas from the middle of the fourth 
century a.d. 

1 Footfalls of Indian History, by Sister Nivedita, p. i8o. 



158 



CHAPTER XI 

INDIA IN GUPTA TIMES 

THE Code of Manu, though it was probably compiled 
some centuries before this time and, like the Maha- 
bharata, embodied Aryan traditions of much greater 
antiquity, may be taken to represent the sociology and polity 
of Aryavarta under the Gupta emperors. Though based upon 
the traditions of Vedic India it describes a state of society in 
many respects altered. Caste distinctions are strictly defined, 
and the supremacy of the Brahmans as spiritual leaders of 
the people is regarded as incontestable, though only by 
reason of their higher purity and superior knowledge of Vedic 
wisdom. 

Of the three twice-born classes Brahmans only were absolutely 
forbidden to marry Sudra women. There was no expiation 
for a Brahman v/ho defiled himself by such an alliance. Brah- 
mans, Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas were advised to choose their 
first wives from their own class, and a Sudra man must not 
marry into a higher class. But with these exceptions there 
was no absolute bar to intermarriage between the different 
varnas, only it was regarded as an indication of a weak intellect 
for any twice-born man to debase the purity of his family 
stock by marriage with a Sudra woman. 

The diet of Brahmans was to be strictly vegetarian, except 
on special occasions on which sacrificial meat was allowed, and 
certain vegetables, such as garlic, onions, leeks, and mushrooms, 
w^ere forbidden. No mortal was more sinful than he who 
desired " to increase his own flesh with the flesh of another 
creature " not offered as a sacrifice to the gods or to his 
ancestors (v, 52). Food was to be eaten reverently, after 

159 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

ablution and prayer, and without excess. " Excessive eating 
is prejudicial to health, to fame, and to bliss in Heaven : it 
is injurious to virtue and odious among men" (ii, 57). The 
fact that fruit trees were especially assigned to Brahmans as 
their portion of the riches of the earth may be connected with 
the planting of fruit gardens for the use of travellers and 
pilgrims which belonged to the tradition of public works in 
India ages before the Mogul times. There is no mention of 
the soma plant, the intoxicating juice of which played so 
important a part in Brahmanical ritual of Vedic times. Even 
in Chandragupta Maurya's time soma plantations were provided 
for Brahman communities by the State.^ The marked change 
from the beef -eating and soma-drinking Brahman of Vedic 
times shows the effect which Asoka's reforms had upon the 
habits of Aryan society. 

There are other indications of the deep impress which 
Buddhist ethics had made upon Brahmanical laws. In the 
epic period hunting and gambling were the chief relaxations 
of Indo-Aryan kings, but Manu classes them among the four 
most pernicious vices which a dutiful king must shun (vii, 50). 
Kautiliya only provided for the proper regulation of gambling- 
houses, but Manu insists that all gambling-houses should be 
suppressed and that the king should punish anyone who in- 
dulged in gambling either privately or publicly, even if only for 
amusement. As Manu includes in his damnatory clauses not 
only gamblers but public dancers and singers and all sellers 
of spirituous liquors it must be assumed that his puritan code 
sometimes reflected his own personal views rather than the 
practical politics of the State. But Fa-Hien's observations 
show that at least in the home provinces of the Gupta Empire, 
Madhyadesa, the laws of Manu were strictly observed mth 
regard to eating of animal food, drinking, and hunting ; for 
he says that " the people of this country kill no living creature 
nor do they drink intoxicating liquors ; and, with the exception 
of the Chandalas they eat neither garlic nor onions. . . . 
In this country they do not keep swine or fowls, they do not 

^ Kautiliya-artha-Sdstra, Book II, chap. ii. 
160 



INDIA IN GUPTA TIMES 

deal in living animals, nor are there shambles or wine shops 
round their markets. . . . The Chandalas alone go hunting 
and deal in flesh." ^ 

In other respects the polity of Manu, which may be taken 
to have been sound Aryan law in the Gupta period, does not 
differ much from that of Kautiliya, which is typical of Mauryan 
times. Kingship was a prerogative of the Kshatriya class 
and was established for the maintenance of the whole system 
of traditional laws, religious and civil, which governed Indo- 
Aryan society. At the same time Manu recognises the possi- 
bility of a Sudra becoming a king, for he advises Brahmans 
to avoid any city governed by a Sudra or inhabited by a 
majority of heretics or outcasts. 

The explanation of the origin of monarchy given by Manu 
is the same as that of the Mahabharata. It was instituted 
after a period of universal anarchy for the purpose of re- 
establishing Aryan laws and institutions. The king was the 
personification of justice, and his authority within the limits 
of Aryan law was absolute. " All classes would become 
corrupt ; all barriers would be broken down ; there would be 
total confusion among men if punishment were not inflicted, 
or were inflicted unduly " (vii, 24). A king who inflicted just 
legal punishments greatly increased virtue, pleasure, and wealth; 
but punishment itself would destroy the king who was crafty, 
voluptuous, and wrathful. 

The king's council, as usual, was to consist of seven or eight 
ministers chosen from those whose ancestors were servants of 
kings, who were versed in the holy books, who were brave, 
skilled in the use of weapons, and of noble lineage. The king 
was bound to consult his councillors on questions of peace 
and war, military, naval, and financial matters, on things 
concerning the protection of the people, and on the proper use 
of the royal revenues (vii, 54-56). He was to act " as a father 
to his people," for the king who foolishly or rashly oppressed 
his subjects would, sooner or later, together with his family, 
be deprived of his kingdom and of life (vii, iii). We have 
^ Travels oj Fah-Hian, Seal's translation, p. 55. 

L 161 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

already noticed several historical instances of the fulfilment 
of this principle of Indo-Aryan law. 

The organisation of the local administration likewise re- 
sembled that of the Maury an period. Villages were grouped 
in tens, twenties, hundreds, and thousands, each group under 
the headship of a State official. The head of the smallest 
group had for his perquisite the produce of two plough-lands, 
or as much land as could be tilled by two ploughs each drawn 
by six bullocks. The head of twenty villages received the 
produce of ten plough-lands, the head of a hundred the 
revenue of a village, and the head of a thousand the revenue 
of a town. 

A governor was appointed to check any abuse of authority 
by these imperial officials. " Since the servants of the king 
whom he has appointed guardians of districts are generally 
knaves, who seize what belongs to other men, from such 
knaves let him defend his people" (vii, 123). Manu only 
refers in general terms to the principles of taxation recognised 
by Aryan law. Taxes on merchandise were to be levied so 
that the king and merchant should both receive their dues, 
lyearned Brahmans were always to be exempt from taxes and 
suitably provided for. Petty traffickers were to be lightly 
taxed, and the lower classes of artisans and labourers might 
give one day's work in a month in lieu of taxes. In time of 
war or of urgent necessity a Kshatriya king might take up to 
one-fourth of the crop as the price of protection of his realm, 
provided that he did not falter in protecting his people with 
his sword. Similarly the taxes demanded by the royal 
treasury from the Vaisya class in times of prosperity must 
not exceed one-twelfth of their crops and one-fiftieth of their 
personal profits ; but in times of public necessity the medium 
rate of one-sixth — or even one-fourth, the highest limit — 
might be lawfully demanded. The highest permissible tax 
on merchandise was one-twentieth of the profits. 

Mann's regulations also throw light upon the ethics of 
ritualistic purity which governed caste distinctions. Among 
the persons to be avoided when oblations were offered to the 
162 



INDIA IN GUPTA TIMES 

gods or to ancestors, and as company at festivals, were physi- 
cians — presumably because they were liable to be infected by 
their patients — anyone suffering from phthisis, elephantiasis, 
epilepsy, leprosy, or erysipelas ; a one-eyed man ; a feeder of 
cattle ; a usurer ; a man who subsisted by the wealth of his 
relatives ; a drunkard or swindler ; a mariner of the ocean ; 
an oilman ; a suborner of perjury ; a gambling-house keeper ; 
a priest who made money by image- worship ; an unlearned 
Brahman ; or a craftsman who built houses for gain. In the 
same category were dancers ; breeders of sporting dogs ; a 
falconer ; a seducer of damsels ; a man delighting in mischief ; 
a Brahman living as a Sudra ; the husband of a Sudra woman ; 
a Sudra teacher ; and Brahmans who only sacrificed to the 
inferior gods. 

The views of the old Aryan law-giver on the relationship of 
the sexes were that " a woman is never fit for independence " : 
their fathers must protect them in childhood, their husbands 
in their youth, and their sons in their old age. It was a 
settled rule that women had no business with the sacred text 
of the Vedas. It was a father's duty to find a husband for 
his daughter as soon as possible after arrival at maturity ; 
but if she remained unmarried for three years after that time 
she was at liberty to choose for herself — only in this case she 
was not to take with her the jewels she had received from her 
father, mother, or brothers. 

Married women must be honoured by their husbands and 
male relations, and provided with suitable ornaments and 
apparel ; for " a wife being gaily adorned her whole house 
is adorned " (iii, 62). "A man might take a second wife if the 
first should not bear children within eight years after marriage ; 
or ten years after marriage if all his children had died ; or 
after eleven years if he had no son. But a good and virtuous 
wife must never be disgraced, though she might be superseded 
by another with her own consent," 

Manu concludes by a summary of the law of Karma and 
transmigration by which every human being receives the 
reward or punishment of his thoughts, words, and actions in 

163 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

this life, or through rebirth in a higher or lower state. 
He sums up by declaring that the highest aim of humanity 
is to attain through Brahmanhood to the knowledge and 
right worship of the One God, as taught by the Upa- 
nishads. 

Samudragupta's son, Chandragupta II, succeeded his father 
about A.D. 380, and as above mentioned adopted the title 
of Vikramaditya. The celebrated Iron Pillar now stand- 
ing in the courtyard of Qutb-ud-din's mosque at Delhi is a 
dhwaja-stambha, or imperial standard, similar to those of 
Asoka, with the imperial symbol of Vishnu's blue lotus flower 
at the top, which was set up by Vikramaditya to record his 
campaigns in Bengal and the Panjab by which he either 
suppressed an attempt to throw off his suzerainty or extended 
the territory won by his father. The conquest of Malwa, 
Gujerat, and the peninsula of Surashtra, or Kathiawar, where 
a dynasty known as the Saka, of Turki origin, had ruled for 
several centuries, restored Aryan political supremacy in 
Western India, and extended Vikramaditya's suzerainty to 
the Arabian Sea, The reigning king, Rudra-Sena, whom 
Vikramaditya is said to have slain with his own hand, bore 
an Aryan name, but is described as a dissolute creature un- 
worthy of the traditions of Aryan kingship. By this conquest 
Vikramaditya obtained possession of the Saka capital, Ujjain, 
an historic city known as the headquarters of Asoka when he 
was viceroy for his father, and as the birthplace of his brother 
Mahendra, who headed the Buddhist mission to Ceylon. It 
was also famous for its university and for its astronomical 
observatory, 

Chandragupta II is generally believed to have been the 
Vikramaditya who was the patron of the great Sanskrit 
dramatist Kalidasa, and if popular tradition may be trusted 
Ujjain, after the fall of the Saka dynasty, became the 
imperial capital where all the most renowned Sanskrit poets, 
artists, and scholars of Ary^avarta added to the lustre of the 
Gupta court. Probably the Gupta imperial family was one 
of those, like the Mogul line, in which father, son, and grandson 
164 



INDIA IN GUPTA TIMES 

were men of high culture and equally zealous patrons of arts 
and letters. 

Among the most interesting records of the Gupta period 
are the accounts written by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hien of 
his travels in search of the authoritative version of the rules 
of the Buddhist Order — ^the Vindya Pitaka. He spent six 
years in the journey overland from his native province of 
Chhang'an to the Indus, six years in India itself copying 
Buddhist texts and collecting sacred relics and images, and 
three years on his return journey to China by sea, including 
a visit to Ceylon which lasted about two years. One can 
learn nothing from his notes of the revival of Brahmanical 
learning, of the splendour of the imperial court, or of the 
achievements of Vikramaditya ; but occasionally he turns 
aside from his pious quest to observe the conditions of the 
people and the government of the country. The people of 
Magadha, he declared, were happy and prosperous. The 
account of the organisation of an imperial government given 
by Kautiliya and others might perhaps justify the comment 
of a European scholar that it depicted " a society choking 
in the deadly grip of a grinding bureaucracy." ^ It is interest- 
ing, therefore, to find an impartial observer of a Hindu admini- 
stration formed on similar lines stating that the people were 
singularly free from bureaucratic tyranny. " They have not 
to register their households, or attend to any magistrates and 
rules." The chief officers of the king had fixed incomes and 
they were not tempted to extort money from the people. 
But even where Buddhism was the State religion the prejudice 
against the Chandalas, or the aboriginals outside the Aryan 
pale, was just as strong as it was in states governed by Brah- 
manical laws. If any one of them entered a town or market- 
place he was obliged to strike a piece of wood so that the 
' pure ' might avoid contact with him. 

It must have been a time of exceptional prosperity if, as 
Fa-Hien seems to imply, the State revenue was mainly derived 
from the rents of the royal domains, the lessees of which were 
^ Dr Iv. D. Bamett, Antiquities oj India, p. 104. 

i6s 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

free to give up possession when they liked. The administration 
of justice was considerably milder than it was in the time of 
Asoka, for offences were generally punished by fines, and the 
death penalty was never inflicted. Only in cases of repeated 
attempts to incite disorder or rebellion the right hand of the 
culprit was cut off. 

It is noticeable that in this time of Brahmanical revival 
Fa-Hien makes no mention of any form of religious persecution, 
or any attempt on the part of orthodox Hindu rulers to deprive 
the Buddhist sects of their endowments and privileges. On the 
contrary, Fa-Hien explains that as the records of these endow- 
ments were no longer engraved on iron, but on sheets of copper, 
they were preserved in good condition and handed down in 
the State archives from one king to another, so that the Sangha 
remained in undisputed possession of its proper revenues and 
no one dared to deprive it of them. The Sangha was in a 
flourishing condition, the followers of the Mahayana and 
Hinayana cults living amicably together. The monks residing 
in the Sangharamas had chambers, beds, coverlets, food, drink, 
and clothes provided for them without stint or reserve. " Thus 
it is in all places." ^ 

Yet many of the most sacred places of Buddhism which in 
the time of Asoka had a large population had fallen into deca^^ 
Gaya was waste and desolate. At Kapilavastu there was no 
government or people : wild elephants and Hons made it 
difficult of access. Sravasti, which in the Buddha's time was 
a great city, the capital of the kingdom of Kosala, had now 
no more than two hundred families. But the Buddhist 
monasteries at other places were rich and magnificent. They 
had fine water-gardens, with luxurious groves and numberless 
flowers of varied hues. At Mathura the followers of the lyaw 
were numerous, and all the kings of the neighbouring countries 
uncovered their heads when they paid their offerings to the 
Sangharamas. The king himself would often come in state 
and conduct the monks to his palace to provide them with 
food, and when the repast had been spread before the guests 

^ Travels oj Fah-Hian, Beal's translatioiij p. 56. 
166 



INDIA IN GUPTA TIMES 

on the royal dais, he and his ministers of State would take 
their stand on a carpet spread below — ^for this " was a nile 
for the conduct of princes which had been handed down from 
the time of the Blessed One." 

Fa-Hien rarely alludes to the existence of orthodox Brahman- 
ism, but in " mid-India," or the provinces which had Ajodhya 
for their chief city, he mentions " ninety-six heretical sects, 
all of whom admitted the reality of worldly phenomena." 
However, he allowed them this merit, that they built dharma- 
sdlas along the roads where travellers found shelter, food, and 
drink, and were supplied with all necessaries. Even Buddhist 
pilgrims were entertained at the public expense, though 
separate provision was made for them. 

At Pataliputra the people were " rich, prosperous, and 
virtuous." The nobles and landowners of the country had 
founded free hospitals within the city to which were admitted 
all poor and helpless patients suffering from all kinds of 
infirmities. " They are well taken care of," says Fa-Hien, 
" and a doctor attends them, food and medicine being sup- 
plied according to their wants. Thus they are made quite 
comfortable, and when they are well they may go away." ^ 

In Pataliputra there once lived a wise Brahman of profound 
learning who did much to extend the influence of the I^aw of 
Buddha. He belonged to the Mahayana school, but lived 
apart from the world in pious seclusion. The king honoured 
him as his guru, and for about fifty years the whole country 
reverenced him and placed entire confidence in his advice. 
When the king went to visit him he did not presume to sit 
down in his presence, and if he should from a feeling of affec- 
tion grasp his guru's hand the latter would immediately wash 
himself from head to foot. This anecdote of Fa-Hien brings 
the evidence of a keen and impartial observer to show how 
little Buddhism had diminished the social and political influence 
of Brahmans or broken down the restrictions of caste rules. 

Both the Great and Little Vehicles flourished at Patahputra, 
and if any sectarian rancour existed Fa-Hien did not observe 

^ ForHien's Travels, Giles' translation, chap, xxvii. 

167 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

it. Once a year, he said, there was a great popular festival 
in which all sects, including the Brahman students, joined. 
It was inaugurated by a great procession of images placed 
upon four-wheeled temple cars. The superstructure of the 
cars, over twenty-two feet in height, was made of bambus 
lashed together in five stages, covered with white linen and 
painted with gaily coloured pictures. Upon them were placed 
images of all the Devas, ornamented with gold, silver, and 
lapis lazuli, under canopies of embroidered silk. At the four 
corners of the cars there were shrines within which were placed 
images of the Buddha in yogi attitude with a Bodhisattva 
in attendance.^ Thus they were drawn into the city from the 
neighbouring monasteries in a stately procession, accompanied 
by singers and musicians, by priests offering flowers and swing- 
ing censers, and great crowds of the lay brethren. At the 
city gates the Brahman students came forward to salute the 
images. There were all sorts of games and amusements for 
the people, and in the evening the city was illuminated with 
lamps. 

In the centre of the city Fa-Hien noticed the ruins of Asoka's 
palace : the walls, built of massive stones, the door- 
ways and sculptured towers, were, he declared, " no human 
work." After a pilgrimage to Gaya, Benares, and other places, 
Fa-Hien returned to Pataliputra and spent three years in 
studying Sanskrit and in copying a manuscript of the Vindya 
Pitaka and other Buddhist texts which he had sought for in 
vain in the earlier part of his travels. He gives the reason 
that throughout the whole of Northern India the learned 
masters of the I^aw trusted entirely to oral tradition handed 
down from one generation of scholars to another, and no 
written copies of the Master's precepts were to be found. 

Now that it is so common to impose literary shibboleths as 
final tests of culture and political capacity it is interesting to 
observe that at a time when India had reached the zenith of 
her creative power in arts and letters, a position at least as 

1 The description suggests that the cars were miniature reproductions of 
the great temple at Bodh-Gaya. 

i68 



INDIA IN GUPTA TIMES 

Mgli as that reached by any modern state, and had achieved 
a system of self-government probably as perfect as the world 
has yet known — if the highest standard of political ethics and 
the general happiness of the community be accepted as criteria 
— she found it not only unnecessary but undesirable to make 
book-learning a test either of literary culture or of poUtical 
capacity. In the Golden Age of Indian literature writing was 
a mercantile accomplishment rather than an intellectual one : 
the highest intellect of the land preferred an oral method of 
education as more exact and more mentally efhcient than that 
of text-books. But in days when machinery has become all- 
powerful even our mentality must be machine-made, lest we 
should go too slowly in the mad race for world-markets and 
world-power. 

It is significant that Magadha, and not the Kushan country, 
was the centre in which Fa-Hien found the authoritative texts 
and symbolic images of Mahayana Buddhism ; also that 
Sanskrit, the literary language of the Brahman schools, was 
used in Magadha for the written statement of the Buddhist 
I^aw. This confirms what the true reading of Gandharan 
sculpture also evidences, that the influence of Hellenistic art 
upon Indian was purely technical in character and was in no 
way the spiritual or intellectual force which shaped its ideals 
p,nd ordered its forms of expression. Magadha and not Gandhara 
was the spiritual centre of the Mahayana Buddhism to which 
Kanishka gave imperial patronage. 

Fa-Hien had not set out on his adventurous journey alone, 
but one of his fellow-pilgrims died, and others returned to 
China, so when he reached Pataliputra he had but one com- 
panion, Tao-Ching. The latter was so deeply impressed by 
the strict decorum and religious deportment of the monks of 
Magadha — " even in the midst of worldly influences " — which 
he contrasted with the lax discipline and ignorance of the 
X-aw shown by the Buddhist priests of his own country, that 
he resolved to remain in India until in some future existence 
he should reach Nirvana. So Fa-Hien, desiring with his whole 
heart to spread the true knowledge of the Good I^aw through- 

169 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

out his native land, returned alone with a precious collection 
of sacred texts and images. He spent two years at Tamlak, 
then the principal port of Kalinga, but now thirty miles 
inland, and about the same time in Ceylon. Then, embarking 
on a great merchant ship manned by two hundred men, he 
set out on his return journey to China by sea. He reached 
Java after a perilous voyage of ninety days, and stayed in the 
island five months. He then resumed his voyage in another 
large merchant vessel, which he found very comfortable, with 
a number of Hindu merchants from Java, described as Brah- 
mans, as fellow-passengers. The ship was provisioned for 
fifty days, but on account of stormy weather the voyage lasted 
three months. 

Fa-Hien here records the only occasion on which he was 
exposed to any danger or subjected to any annoyance through 
sectarian animosity. Provisions ran short, and he narrowly 
escaped the fate of being landed on a desert island, for the 
Brahmans attributed their misfortunes to Fa-Hien and the 
heretical books and images he had brought on board. How- 
ever, they refrained from molesting him for fear of the punish- 
ment they might receive from the King of China, and Fa-Hien 
at length reached his native land in safety with all his precious 
cargo. 

Fa-Hien's account of India makes us understand that it 
was only when Buddhism was detached from its parent stem 
and transplanted in foreign lands that it became a fixed 
system of dogma which ceased to develop ethically and philo- 
sophically. In India it was always a synthesis and alwa^'S 
in process of evolution or disintegration. Buddhism grew out 
of Brahmanism, or early Hinduism, and for a time contained 
Hinduism within itself. I^ater Hinduism grew out of Bud- 
dhism, and the latter, though disintegrated, continued to live 
in India within the new synthesis of Hinduism. In India 
religion is hardly a dogma, but a working hypothesis of human 
conduct adapted to different stages of spiritual development 
and different conditions of life. 



170 



CHAPTER XII 

THE HUNS IN INDIA— GUPTA ART 
AND ARCHITECTURE 

VIKRAMADITYA was succeeded in a.d. 413 by his son, 
Kiimaragupta, in whose reign, which lasted over forty 
years, the troubles of Ar3^avarta were renewed. It is 
worth while to recall the fact that it was a fixed principle of 
Indo-Aryan polity never to embark upon wars of foreign 
aggression, i.e. outside the boundaries of Bharata-Varsha, or 
Aryavarta in its widest sense. Even the great war-lords 
Samudragupta and Vikramaditya, with the most powerful 
armies and navies at their command,^ and with almost unlimited 
opportunities at a time when the Roman Empire was tottering 
to its fall, were content to limit their title of world-sovereignty 
to the confines of Aryavarta and the people who came within 
the Aryan pale. The great wealth of India's natural resources 
and its geographical unity might seem to make the temptation 
less than it would be under other conditions, but such condi- 
tions, as a rule, only tend to inflame the lust for power of would- 
be world-conquerors. 

But though the wisdom of Indo-Aryan polity thus protected 
the State from the consequences of aggressive foreign wars, the 
love of independence which always inspired the Aryan people 
and the very heterogeneous character of the racial elements of 
which Aryavarta was formed were disintegrating forces always 
threatening to weaken dangerously India's power of resistance 
to attacks from outside. The imperial constitution of Arya- 
varta, though nominally on a popular basis, was too little 
representative of local interests to hold together long except 
under rulers of unusual capacity and high character, or when 

171 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the semi-independent states which were federated with it 
forgot their mutual jealousies and rivalries in the face of a 
great common danger. 

Every interval of peace and prosperity under a strong central 
government was quickly followed by internal dissensions which 
sooner or later opened the door to the invader on the north- 
west frontier, always ready for an opportunity to loot the 
prosperous cities of the Indian plains. The prestige of Samu- 
dragupta's and Vikramaditya's arms maintained peace in 
Aryavarta for over thirty years of Kumaragupta's reign, but 
towards the end of it the Gupta dynasty was seriously 
threatened by the attempt of one of its vassal states to assert 
its independence by force of arms. The details of the struggle 
are only known by an inscription in which it is recorded that, 
after a serious defeat inflicted on the imperial armies by a 
confederation known as the Pushyamitra, the Crown Prince, 
Skandagupta, retrieved the situation by the complete over- 
throw of the enemy. 

In 455 Kumaragupta died and was succeeded by Skanda- 
gupta. Seeing how narrow was the difference which separated 
Brahmanism from Buddhism at this time it is not surprising 
to find that though the Guptas were known as devoted adherents 
of the Vishnu cult, Skandagupta is claimed in the Buddhist 
chronicles as a zealous disciple of Vasubandhu, a celebrated 
Mahayanist teacher of that time, and as a liberal patron of the 
Sangha. It would, however, be a mistake to conclude that 
he therefore renounced the worship of Vishnu and ceased to 
be a Hindu. It simply meant that he regarded the Buddha, 
rather than Krishna, as the Divine Guru who showed him the 
right way to worship Vishnu. Skandagupta could therefore 
continue to show on his imperial coinage the S5^mbols of a 
pious Hindu ruler without any inconsistency or offence to the 
spirits of his illustrious ancestors. 

The first duty which Skandagupta was called upon to 
perform after his accession to his father's throne was to take 
up arms in defence of Aryavarta against a foreign enemy — 
the most powerful and relentless which had threatened its 
172 



THE HUNS IN INDIA 

security since the Turki invasions. The left wing of the vast 
hordes of savage Huns which had started on their devastating 
work westward turned aside to pour down into the Indus 
valley through the passes of the north-western Himalayas. 
The first onrush of the barbarians was successfully met. 
Skandagupta inflicted a crushing defeat upon them, and bring- 
ing the joyful news to his mother^ " just as Krishna when he 
had slain his enemies hastened to his mother, Devaki," he 
ordered his victory to be celebrated by sacrifices to the Devas 
and by the usual permanent memorial, a Vishnu pillar, as a 
thank-offering for the delivery of Aryavarta from her hateful 
enemies. The pillar, with an inscription recording the event, 
still stands at Bhitari in the Ghazipu.r district, not far from 
Benares. 

About twelve years later the Huns renewed their furious 
onrush, and this time secured a strong footing in Gandhara, 
the former centre of the Kushan Empire, where one of the 
chieftains made himself execrated by the atrocities he com- 
mitted upon the Buddhist monks and laymen. From 470 
until his death about ten years later Skandagupta was engaged 
in resisting successive incursions into India of these ferocious 
exponents of the doctrine of ' frightfulness ' in war. The 
Indo- Aryan military code fully recognised that war is war. 
The Sukrd-nitisdra, after explaining the ethics of warfare as 
recognised by Aryans, and forbidding the slaughter of old men, 
women, and children, and even fighting men when wounded, 
asleep, naked, or unarmed, ^ makes the reservation that these 
rules applied only to wars conducted according to the laws of 
morality. There was a method of warfare, the kutayudha, or 
non-moral war, which was justified as having been used by 
Rama, Krishna, and other Aryan heroes in exterminating 
demons like Ravana and others who were outside humanitarian 
laws. But, though it was admitted in India of the fifth century 
A.D. that there was no method like this for extirpating a 
powerful enemy, it was unthinkable that it should be employed 
in wars between Aryan and Aryan. Tempora mutantur. 
1 Chap. IV, Sect, vn, 724. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

There is only vague tradition to rely upon for the details of 
Skandagupta's later wars with the Huns ; but the greater 
part of North-western India seems to have been overrun by 
the barbarians, who followed the same tactics of indiscrimi- 
nate slaughter of non-combatants, destruction and plunder of 
monasteries and religious monuments, as their fellow-tribesmen 
in Europe. The imperial treasury found great difficulty in 
financing Skandagupta's campaigns, and the usual method of 
meeting such great emergencies was resorted to, i.e. the standard 
of the gold coinage was reduced, for the later issues of Skanda- 
gupta's suvarnas, or pieces of gold, show a decline in the 
amount of pure gold from io8 to 73 grains.^ 
I Apparently Skandagupta kept the Hunnish hordes at bay 
until about 480, when he died and was succeeded by his half- 
brother Puragupta, who in accordance with the traditions of 
Aryan polity seems to have superseded the direct heirs to the 
succession as being better qualified to undertake the responsi- 
bilities of government in such troublous times. The fact that 
the Gupta gold coinage in his reign was raised above the normal 
standard of purity ^ is an indication that the empire was 
recovering its internal prosperity ; but the Huns were still 
devastating its north-western provinces, and continued to do 
so throughout Puragupta's short reign of about five years. 

The next of the line, Narasinhagupta Baladitya, who came 
to the throne about 485, was distinguished alike by his piety 
and his military achievements. He had for his spiritual 
teacher Skandagupta's Buddhist preceptor, Vasubandhu, who 
thereafter had an honoured place at the imperial court in 
Ajodhya. Many Buddhist seats of learning, especially the 
famous university at Nalanda, benefited by Baladitya's patron- 
age. Nevertheless he exhibited the tolerant spirit of an Aryan 
sovereign by allowing his sister to take for a husband a learned 
Brahman, named Vasurata, who was known for his zeal in de- 
fending orthodox Vedic teaching against Vasubandhu's attacks. 
The philosophical disputations of the learned pandits of the 

1 Vincent Smith, Early History oj India, 2nd edit., p. 291. 

2 Ibid., p. 291. 



THE HUNS IN INDIA 

court seem for a time to have diverted Baladitya's attention 
from the great dangers which threatened the security of his 
empire. Wave after wave of marauding Huns continued to 
pour through the passes of the north-west, and the imperial 
armies failed to stem their advance into the Indus valley. 
About 495 the rich province of Malwa was wrested from Bala- 
ditya by a Hun chieftain named Toramana, who abandoned 
the predatory habits of his race, adopted Indo-Aryan royal 
titles, and exercised suzerainty over the local rajas in Central 
India and the Panjab who formerly owed allegiance to the 
Guptas. Other rajas in the Dekhan seized the opportunity 
to assert their independence, so that the Gupta Empire was 
gradually reduced to a shadow of its former greatness. 

Toramana before he died had consolidated his power in the 
frontier provinces almost as effectively as the Kushans. He 
appears to have been a sagacious ruler. Perhaps the Turki 
element in the population which had already become Aryanised 
made it easier for the Huns to assimilate Indo-Aryan ideas 
and traditions of government. But his son Mihiragula, who 
succeeded him about 510, was an unmitigated savage whose 
record for fiendish cruelty might stand with that of Nero and 
Attila. The relentless slaughter and persecution of his Buddhist 
subjects at length aroused all Aryavarta to combine in attack- 
ing the tyrant, and a confederation headed by Baladitya and 
Yasodharman, a raja of Central India, defeated the Hun army, 
circa 528, in a pitched battle in which Mihiragula himself was 
taken prisoner. He would have forfeited his life as a punish- 
jment for his misdeeds had not the chivalrous Baladitya set 
an example of Buddhist piety and respect for Aryan laws by 
releasing him and allowing him to go into exile. His younger 
brother was then placed upon the throne as his successor at 
Sakala (Sialkot), the capital of the Hun dynasty. 
I Mihiragula's brutal character was not bettered by Bala- 
|iitya's magnanimity. He took shelter in Kashmir, where the 
(|.aja protected him and gave him and his retinue a small 
jippanage for their maintenance. But at the first opportunity 
le made a treacherous attack upon his benefactor, seized the 

175 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

kingdom for himself, and with the augmented strength which 
success always brings to tyrants of criminal propensities next 
invaded Gandhara. There he sought to recover his lost 
prestige among his compatriots by a characteristic exhibi- 
tion of Hunnish methods of warfare. The royal family was 
exterminated, thousands of non-combatants were massacred ; 
the splendid Buddhist monasteries and shrines were plundered 
and laid in ruins. But within a year after this exploit Mihira- 
gula died, and the speedy dechne of the Hun supremacy which 
followed after his death illustrated the futility of ' frightfulness ' 
as a means of gaining permanent control over the destinies of 
nations. 

But though the Huns ceased thereafter to have any import- 
ance as an independent ruling race in India, the effect of a 
century of Hun incursions — following those of the Sakas, 
Kushans, and other Central Asian nomads in previous centuries, 
partly warlike and partly peaceful in character — could not 
fail to make a deep impression upon the sociology and polity 
of Northern India. Even after the military strength of Arya- 
varta had broken the Hun armies and arrested their further 
advance, the principles of Aryan religion forbade the delibe- 
rate wholesale extermination of a defeated enemy — even the 
detested Mlechchhas. The more peaceful foreign immigrants 
would settle down to agrictdtural pursuits and become recog- 
nised as Sudras. Many detached bands of fighting men would, 
as they did in similar circumstances in Europe, establish them- 
selves in remote corners of the country and by the help of 
forced local labour build themselves hill-fortresses strong 
enough to stand a prolonged siege. Having thus established 
their right of overlordship by force of arms the Hun or Turki 
chieftains and their retainers would have no difficulty in secur- 
ing brides of Indo-Aryan blood by the right of capture well 
recognised by Aryan tradition. Their descendants were eventu- 
ally admitted into the Aryan pale as members of the Kshatriya 
caste, but naturally they would take rank from their maternal 
ancestry rather than from their Hun or Turki relations. 

There can be little doubt that the numerous ramifications 
176 



THE HUNS IN INDIA 

of the Rajput clans of the present day are the result of the 
many foreign elements which were assimilated by Indo- Aryan 
society from the fourth to the sixth centuries and in later 
times. To the same cause may be attributed the greatly 
increased strictness of caste regulations and the gradual weaken- 
ing of Indo-Aryan political strength which became apparent 
in succeeding centuries. The pure-blooded Rajputs who prided 
themselves on their descent from the heroes of the Maha- 
bharata kept themselves aloof from the foreign intruders, as 
their ancestors had held themselves aloof from the non- Aryan 
population in ancient times. Racial prejudice added to the 
growing prestige of the Brahmans as being less tainted with 
an admixture of impure Mlechchha blood. The same reason 
made the Brahman aristocracy look askance at alliances with 
Kshatriya women and tended to increase the penalties for all 
breaches of caste custom. 

This strong infusion of barbarian blood lowered the high 
ethical standard of Indo-Aryan tradition and favoured the 
growth of many of the vulgar superstitions which were never 
countenanced by the great philosophers and spiritual teachers 
of Aryavarta. It tended also to debase the free spirit of 
Aryan political ideals, to weaken the authority of the popular 
assemblies, and to increase the arbitrary power exercised by the 
head of the State. ' Oriental despotism ' was of Tartar or 
Mongolian creation : it was never recognised in Indo-Aryan 
traditional laws. 

The death of Baladitya about 530 may be taken as the end 
of the political greatness of the Guptas, though his successors 
continued to rule over Magadha, or the eastern provinces of 
the empire, with Patahputra as their capital. The Gupta era 
is well known as the Golden Age of Sanskrit literature, and 
Orientalists are agreed in attributing to the Sanskrit revival 
the extant recensions of the epics, the works of Kalidasa, and 
other Indo-Aryan classics. Archaeologists are far less precise 
in defining the characteristic expression of Gupta culture in 
art and architecture. Fergusson and other authorities have 

M 177 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

attempted to distinguish a Gupta style of architecture by a 
detailed analysis of a few temples which by epigraphical or 
other chronological evidence can be proved to belong to that 
period ; but they are too few in number and insufficiently 
important to determine the architectural characteristics of a 
creative epoch which was doubtless not less productive in 
architecture than it was in literature. 

The Gupta period politically was an Indo-Aryan revival, 
for the Guptas were undoubtedly the representatives of the 
Aryan Kshatriya tradition and champions of the Aryan cause 
against Aryavarta's adversaries of Turki, Hun, Dravidian, and 
other alien descent. From the religious point of view it was 
marked by a Vaishnava propaganda in which Krishna, the 
Aryan hero of the Mahabharata, was put forward as the 
exponent of Indo-Aryan teaching in opposition to the Buddhist 
doctrines, chiefly Mahayanist, favoured by Aryavarta's alien 
enemies. If Fergusson's conventional method of classification 
be applied to Gupta buildings we should therefore be justified 
in assuming that they would be characteristic of the spirit of 
the age and would be rightly catalogued as belonging to an 
' Indo-Aryan style.' 

But Fergusson's analysis of an ' Indo-Aryan style ' conflicts 
entirely with this point of view. Its geographical limits corre- 
sponded with the country described as Aryavarta, but he says, 
" No style is so purely local, and, if the term may be used, so 
aboriginal, as this." ^ And of its chief characteristic, the 
curvilinear steeple of the temple, known as the sikhara, he 
says : " Wherever a square tower-like temple exists with a 
perpendicular base, but a curvilinear outline above, there we 
may feel certain of the existence, past or present, of a people 
of Dasyu extraction " — ^the Dasyus being the non- Aryan, 
aboriginal races of India with whom the Aryans came into 
conflict. " No one," says Fergusson, ** can accuse the pure 
Aryans of introducing this form into India, or of building 
temples at all, or of worshipping images of vSiva or Vishnu, 
with which these temples are filled, and they consequently 

^ History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, vol. ii, p. 86. 

178 



GUPTA ART AND ARCHITECTURE 

have little title to confer their name on the style. The Aryans 
had, however, become so impure in blood before these temples 
were erected, and were so mixed up with the aboriginal tribes 
whose superstitions had so influenced their religion and their 
arts, that they accepted their temples with their gods." ^ 

Fergusson himself, though convinced of its aboriginal Indian 
or Dasyu origin, left the symbolism of the sikhara unexplained 
and frankly confessed it to be a mystery to him. Other writers 
have tried to prove its derivation from the stupa, but all 
archaeologists have accepted Fergusson's dictum that it was 
not introduced into India by the Aryans, and that the ' Indo- 
Aryan style ' was a borrowed one. 

It is most important for the understanding of the history of 
Aryan India to clear up the mystery of the derivation of the 
sikhara and its connection with early Aryan religion. No one 
can remain long in India and become familiar with its monu- 
ments without feeling that the innumerable temple spires of 
Northern India, essentially the same in every place whether 
the temple be Jain, Buddhist, Vaishnava, or Saiva, have much 
to tell us of the foundation of Aryan religious beliefs. The 
theory that the sikhara is derived from the stupa seems to be 
untenable if only for the reason that at the most ancient sites 
of Buddhism, such as Sarnath, the sikhara is found side by 
side with the stupa, but quite as fully developed and as distinct 
from the latter both in structure and symbolism as it is at 
any later period. There are no transitional forms by which 
one can trace the passing of the stupa into the sikhara. The 
sikhara may be square, octagonal, or circular in its base, but 
in the most ancient examples the amalaka, or the melon- 
shaped finial, which is its most striking characteristic, is never 
used on the stupa dome. It is quite clear that the sikhara 
shrine as a symbol was meant to be the antithesis to or comple- 
ment of the stupa. 

The stupa is a reliquary or funeral monument — a symbol of 
death. The sikhara shrine we may therefore assume to be 
a symbol of life — or, using the terminology of modern Hinduism, 

1 op. cit., Introduction, p. 14. 

179 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the stupa is a Saiva symbol, the sikhara is a Vaishnava symbol. 
Starting with this hypothesis, that the sikhara as a symbol 
is connected with the Vaishnava cult, let us now endeavour 
to trace it back to its place in early Aryan life. The Vaishnava 
cult was undoubtedly Kshatriya in origin and closely connected 
with primitive, hero-worship, or loyalty to the tribal traditions 
in the person of its chieftain. According to the Silpa-Sastras 
the Vishnu-temple's place in the Aryan village was on the 
Rajapatha, the King's Road. It was the royal chapel, for 
Vishnu was the patron deity of the Kshatriya caste, and the 
amalaka which crowned it is the same as that which formed 
the capital of the royal standard, or Vishnu pillar, on which 
Asoka inscribed his edicts. It represents the fruit of the blue 
lotus {Nymphaea cerulea), Vishnu's flower, conventionally 
treated to indicate the partitions of the interior of the seed- 
capsule, or the spokes of the wheel of life. The Indo- Aryan 
king by his consecration as Vishnu's vicegerent on earth 
probably took rank as a Kshatriya whatever his family vama, 
or caste, might have been. 

Now we find that other conspicuous features of Indian 
architecture were originally associated with secular rather than 
religious uses. The Amaravati sculptures show the torana, or 
arched entrance of Buddhist stupas, in its original use as a 
town or village gateway, and the name gopuram, or cow-fort, 
of modern Hindu temples suggests its derivation from similar 
brick or stone gateways used as watch-towers for the protec- 
tion of the Aryan villagers' cattle. The usual method of 
construction used for temple sikharas and their ornamentation 
convey a similar suggestion of the original use of the spire as 
a military watch-tower or fort. The interior of the spire is 
usually built up in stories, as may be seen from a ruined 
example at Khajuraho, and the decoration of the miniature 
sikharas found at Sarnath ^ shows how each story was pierced 
on all sides by sun-shaped loopholes out of which the royal 
sentinels could watch the surrounding country and shoot 

^ See The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India, by the author, Fig. 41, 
p. 97. 
180 




II. Stei<e of Naram-Sin 



GUPTA ART AND ARCHITECTURE 

arrows at tlie approaching enemy. The wooden or bambu 
type of construction which was retained even when the material 
was brick or stone indicates that in their original secular use 
for the protection of the king's person the sikharas were often 
improvised when the army was in camp, and in such cases 
bambu would be universally used in India. The fact that the 
name ratha, or warrior's chariot, is sometimes applied to a 
temple vim ana, and literally interpreted by the carving of 
stone wheels on the plinth of the mandapam, also suggests that 
the king's car was often similarly furnished with a bambu 
superstructure to distinguish it from the otliers, and to provide 
platforms for archers of the royal body-guard. 

That such an improvised fort or armoured car might have 
been used b}^ the Dasyus who opposed the early Aryan invaders 
of India is quite possible ; but as they have left no artistic 
record which can be used as evidence it is impossible to prove 
it. On the other hand, there are at least two important 
artistic documents of great antiquity which support the theory 
now put forward that the sikhara was used by the Aryans, 
both symbolically and practically, long before the days of 
Buddhism, and that it was not borrowed from the non- Aryan 
races of India. It is true that they cannot be described as 
Aryan documents, but both of them come from the Euphrates 
valley, from the time and the places when and where the 
Aryans, the devotees of Surya, were engaged in the struggle 
with their ancient foes, the Asuras, and they are good evidence 
of the original use of the sikhara as a royal fortress-tower. 

The earliest of the two, dated by Mr H. R. Hall circa 
2750 B.C., is the famous stele of the Semitic king Naram-Sin, 
already described. ^ Whether the conical tower which is so 
conspicuously shown in the stele is there used as a fort or 
a temple is not clear, but it is significant that the symbolism 
used is the same as that of the Indian sikhara ; only Vishnu, 
the midday sun, instead of being represented by the blue lotus, 
is sculptured realistically immediately over the summit of the 
cone. The latter may have been formed by clay laid over a 
^ Supra, pp. 112-113. 

181 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

wooden or basket-work frame, as similar structures are built 
in the present day in the same locality, or it may have been 
only a skin tent. But the characteristic form and the symbol- 
ism make it extremely probable that here we have the proto- 
type of the perfected Aryan sikhara, as shown in the miniature 
examples found at Sarnath. 

The other ancient illustration of the sikhara is figured in 
I^ayard's Nineveh} and is there described as Sennacherib's 
palace. Here among a group of buildings, some with flat 
roofs and others with domes like that of a stupa, are two 
sikharas, more structurally developed than in Naram-Sin's 
stele, though still of a primitive type. One of them has a 
square base, resembling the garbha-grihya or shrine of an Indian 
temple, and both of them are crowned by a finial which suggests 
the amalaka or a similar sun-symbol. On the summit of the 
adjacent mountain another Vishnu symbol appears, the flower- 
ing tree, contrasted with the cypress, the tree of eternity. It 
is also significant that in both of these ancient examples 
the sikhara is associated with a hill or mountain-top, the 
natural site for a king's or tribal chieftain's fort, which was 
always connected with the ritual and symbolism of the Vishnu 
cult. 

In early Vedic times the Kshatriyas, not the Brahmans, 
were the spiritual leaders of the Aryan tribes, and the Aryan 
village or township, built for defensive purposes, like the 
medieval fortresses of Rajputana, would have for its centre 
the Kshatriya chieftain's fort, crowned by a sikhara, outside 
which the tribal altar was raised. The Vedic rites connected 
with the worship of Surya, the patron deity of the Aryan 
warrior, were celebrated by the Kshatriya chieftain, and his 
fort with its tower and sun-shaped loopholes thus came to be 
regarded as a sacred shrine, and the chieftain himself as a 
delegate of the Sun-god, Surya. Hence the Ranas of Mewar, 
the representatives of the most ancient royal line of Aryan 
India, claim to be descendants, or sons, of Surya ; and for 
the same reason the sun emblems, like the amalaka, were 

1 Second Series, PI. XVI. 
182 




12. Pai,ace of Sennacherib 
AT Nineveh 



182 



GUPTA ART AND ARCHITECTURE 

placed upon the royal Aryan standards and upon the summit 
of the king's tent or fort. 

In later Vedic times Surya-worship merged into that of 
Vishnu,! and assumed a profounder metaphysical aspect with 
the gradual development of the philosophy of the Upanishads. 
But the metaphysics of the cult of Vishnu always retained 
the symbolism derived from the ancient ritualistic practice. 
Vishnu is always represented with the regalia and arms of a 
Kshatriya king. The Vaishnava theory of hhakti, or devotion 
to God, grew out of hero-worship and the feeling of loyalty 
to the chieftain of the tribe. The incarnations of Vishnu were 
mostly metaphysical deductions drawn from the history of 
ancient Aryan heroes. The Western student must, however, 
be careful not to confuse the traditional ritualistic symbolism 
with the metaphysical ideas connected with them ; or imagine 
that the Vaishnava cult is to be fully explained as the apotheosis 
of kingship combined with prehistoric mountain-worship. 

If these conclusions are justified the fact that the sikhara 
is the most characteristic feature of the temple architecture 
of Aryavarta, the modern Hindustan, and that it began to 
be prominent at the beginning of the Vaishnava propaganda 
of the Gupta period need no longer be regarded as a mystery, 
but as the natural sequence of its historical associations with 
the ancient Aryan ritual of the Kshatriyas. It must also 
follow that we must look for the characteristics of a Gupta 
style of architecture among the more ancient of the sikhara- 
crowned temples of Hindustan, like those of Bhuvanesvar, 
and that the flat-roofed spireless temples which General Cun- 
ningham and others have cited as typical examples of the 
style must be placed in quite a different category. They are 
in fact Siva temples, and therefore represent a cult chiefly 
identified with Brahmanical caste-traditions, which did not 
come into political prominence until after the Gupta period, 
though like the Vishnu cult it had a history of great antiquity. 

Apart from temple architecture the art of the Gupta period 

^ This is made clear by the most ancient images of Surya, which are practi- 
cally identical with those of Vishnu, except for a slight variation of symbolism. 

183 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

is illustrated by some of the earlier halls and chapels of the 
splendid abbey of Ajanta, one of the great universities of the 
time. The fragments of the wonderful frescoes still remaining 
on the walls are not only masterpieces of painting, but, both 
in their vivid imagination and in their realistic portrayal of 
contemporary life, they give a striking impression of the 
masterful creative impulses which were then stirring the mind 
of India. In this respect they fully confirm the evidence of 
contemporary Sanskrit literature and Fa-Hien's graphic descrip- 
tion of Indian Ufe. 

As records of the religious thought of the period they show 
clearly that the Buddha then, and probably long before that 
time, was not only recognised by Brahman theology as one 
of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, but was actually worshipped 
as such by the Buddhists themselves, though their iconic 
symbolism and terminology were adapted to their own philo- 
sophical tenets. In the noble fresco of the marriage of Prince 
Siddhartha which decorates the front of the shrine in the 
first monastic hall — one of a series which are within or very 
near to the Gupta period — the Bodhisattva is represented 
holding Vishnu's blue lotus flower, and the two divine lovers, 
Siva and Parvati, watch the ceremony with benevolent interest 
from the heights of Mount Kailasa. Mahay ana Buddhism is 
here shown to be only one of the sectarian phases of the great 
Vaishnava movement of which all the Gupta emperors from 
Chandragupta to Baladitya were the zealous patrons. The 
Saiva sculptures of Klephanta, which belong to the same 
artistic school, though perhaps of a somewhat later period,^ 
reveal another sectarian phase of the same movement. Here 
the symbolism of the marriage of Siva and Parvati is a corollary 
of that of the marriage of Vishnu with the goddess I^akshmi, 
churned from the depths of the waters of life, and the majestic 
head of Vishnu which forms the centre of the Trimurti sculpture 
is the Brahmanical counterpart of the head of the Bodhi- 

^ Fergusson's estimate of the date of the great temple — the eighth or ninth 
century — based only on evidence of ' style/ is in all probability several 
centuries too late. 

184 




13- Vishnu Shrine, Bar war Sagar, Centrai, Provinces 184 



GUPTA ART AND ARCHITECTURE 

sattva in the Ajanta frescoes. The concept of the Three 
Aspects of the One — Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva — represented 
symboHcally from the Saiva point of view in the famous 
sculpture of Blephanta, was one of the fundamental, cosmo- 
logical ideas upon which Indian theism, both Buddhist and 
Brahmanical, was based : its philosophical development was 
infinitely older than its first artistic representation, just as 
the Vedas were compiled ages before they were committed to 
writing. 

Thus the sculptors and painters of the Gupta age have left 
to posterity a record of the synthesis of Indian thought corre- 
sponding exactly to that of the Gupta recension of the Maha- 
bharata, in which Krishna, as the incarnation of Vishnu, sums 
up the essence of Aryan religion in the Song of the Blessed 
One. The psychology of Indian history can never be under- 
stood by treating Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism as 
water-tight compartments wholly independent of each other, 
as they are in the narrative of a zealous sectarian like Fa-Hien. 
Neither is it possible in this way to understand the tolerance 
shown by one sect towards another, nor how some of the Gupta 
emperors, without outraging the traditions of the dynasty, 
or the feelings of their subjects, could accept Buddhist teachers 
as their gurus and continue to display Brahmanical symbols 
in State ceremonial and official procedure. 

Among the most interesting architectural monuments of the 
Gupta period is the so-called Vishvakarma Chaitya House at 
HUora, which may be assigned to the sixth century. Vishva- 
karma was the Divine Architect, the Ishta-devata of the 
master-builder, and it is probable that this was the chapel of 
the guild of masons who resided at Bllora and for many genera- 
tions devoted themselves to excavating all the wonderful 
shrines and monasteries along the crescent-shaped rocky 
precipice, which was sacred in the eyes of every Indian pilgrim, 
both by reason of its formation and on account of the great 
waterfall which flows over it. 

If this were the masons' chapel of Bllora we have here a 
specially significant record of the great co-operative guilds 

185 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

which played so important a part in the social economy of 
India. The members of these technical corporations recognised 
no distinction of sect, so far as their business as craftsmen was 
concerned, and the Vishvakarma Chaitya House was in all 
probability the Guildhall of Ellora, not an ordinary chapter- 
house or Chaitya Hall for Buddhist monks. Unless one realises 
the non-sectarian character of Indian craft-traditions it is im- 
possible to understand either the history of art in India or 
its affinities with the art of Europe : how, for instance, the 
traditions of the art of Gandhara, originally pagan, became 
Buddhist under Kanishka, Christian under Constantine the 
Great, and Hindu under Vikramaditya in India. 



1 86 




14. ViSHVAKARMA ChAITYA HOUSE, El-r,ORA 



i86 



CHAPTER XIII 

HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

THOUGH the Gupta line did not become extinct until 
the early part of the eighth century the history of 
the dynasty ceases to have much interest after the 
middle of the sixth. The political disorder which followed 
the Hun invasions had led, as we have already seen, to the 
detachment of the western and north-western provinces of 
the Gupta Empire from the central power, some under the 
rule of Hunnish kings, and some under rulers of Turki or 
Indo- Aryan descent. The tendency of these disorders was to 
shift the centre of Indo-Aryan supremacy again further south, 
though for some centuries later the northern states were strong 
enough to check the foreign invader. 

Little is known of Yasodharman, the raja of Central India 
with whose aid Baladitya had overthrown the savage despot 
Mihiragula, except that his court poet in a panegyric inscribed 
on two pillars of victory claimed for him an empire stretching 
from the Brahmaputra to the Arabian Sea, and from the 
Himalayas to Mahendragiri in Orissa. Court poems should 
not be taken too literally, but we can well believe that Yaso- 
dharman had much more energy and military capacity than the 
philosophic Gupta emperor, and that he took the leading part 
in the successful campaign against the Huns, for the clarion 
call to the Kshatriya warrior in the Bhagavad Gita would not 
appeal strongly to a man of Buddhist sympathies. 

But Yasodharman's reign was apparently a short one, and 
nothing is known of any other of his line. After the defeat 
of the Huns, the rajas of Valabhi, the capital of the province 
of Surashtra (Kathiawar), became independent and were 
known as great patrons of Buddhist learning until about 770, 

187 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

when the Arabs who had established themselves in Sind over- 
threw the dynasty. About the middle of the sixth century 
the Indo- Aryan states of the Dekhan, which had not taken a 
leading position since the middle of the second century — ^when 
the Andhra king distinguished himself by overthrowing the 
Saka, Yavana, and Pahlavi tribes whose occupation of the 
Kathiawar province preceded that of the Huns — began to 
appropriate some of the departed glory of the Gupta Empire. 

Pulakesin I, a Rajput chieftain who claimed descent from 
the ancient Aryan dynasty of Ajodhya, about 550 founded the 
Chalukyan Empire, which soon became powerful enough to 
prevent any northern state from reasserting its suzerainty 
over the kingdoms lying south of the Vindhya Mountains. 
For the next fifty years Indian political history is only a dull 
record of dynastic struggles which came to no decisive issue, 
until about 606 another strong man, Harsha-Vardhana of 
Thaneshar, a scion of the Gupta line, restored for a time the 
fortunes of Aryavarta and once more brought peace and 
security to the people of Northern India. The history of his 
reign, which lasted forty years, is illuminated by the writings 
of another adventurous Chinaman, Hiuen-Tsang, who like his 
predecessor Fa-Hien undertook a pilgrimage to the I^and of the 
Ivotus of the Good Law in order to bring back to his country 
authentic records of the teaching of the Enlightened One. 

Thaneshar, or Sthanesvara, then capital of a small Rajput 
state, shared with Ajodhya the fame of being the most holy 
ground of Aryavarta, for it was biiilt close to the famous 
battlefield of the Mahabharata, Kurukshetra, upon which the 
divine Krishna had taught the hero Arjuna the duties of an 
Aryan warrior. The Raja Prabhakara-Vardhana, Harsha's 
father, had taken an honourable part in the wars against the 
Huns, and other Mlechchha states adjoining his own, and it 
was in 604, while the Crown Prince Rajya-Vardliana, Harsha's 
elder brother, was leading a large army to attack the Huns 
on the north-west frontier, that the Raja died. Harsha, who 
though only fifteen years old was in command of a reserve of 
cavalry which followed the rgyal army, immediately returned 
188 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

to the capital to act as regent in his brother's absence, and 
Rajya-Vardhana, on the conclusion of a successful campaign 
which justified his selection as Yuva-raja, returned a few 
months afterwards and took his father's place on the throne 
according to Aryan law. But immediately afterwards, mes- 
sengers from Kanauj having brought the news that his brother- 
in-law, the raja of that state, had been slain by the Raja of 
Malwa — ^probably a Hun — and that his sister the Princess 
Rajasri had been thrown into prison like a common felon, the 
new Raja of Thaneshar once more put himself at the head of 
his army and marched out to rescue his sister and avenge 
her husband's death, leaving Harsha in military command 
at the capital. The new campaign began with complete 
success. The Malwa raja was defeated in battle, but unfortu- 
nately the gallant Kshatriya king was inveigled into a trap 
by one of the enemy's allies and treacherousl3^ murdered. At 
the same time the Princess of Thaneshar escaped from her 
prison and fled with a few attendants to a forest hermitage in 
the Vindhya Mountains. 

At this crisis Harsha was nominated by the State Council 
as his brother's successor. It may be presumed that Rajya- 
Vardhana's sons were for some reason unfitted to assume 
royal responsibilities, for they had no prescriptive right to 
the throne except as being the best qualified of the king's 
nearest relatives. The interests of the State always over- 
ruled family rights in this matter. According to the Sukrd- 
nitisdra (ii, 29-31) the choice of an heir-presumptive to the 
crown lay between the king's uncle, if younger than himself ; 
a younger brother or son of his elder brother ; his own son — 
or one treated as a son ; an adopted child or daughter ; or 
a sister's son, according to their relative qualifications.^ 

1 Mr Vincent Smith suggests {Early History of India, pp. 3 10-3 11) that the 
State Council were acting unconstitutionally in setting aside the rights of 
Rajya-Vardhana' s children, and that Harsha' s nomination was due to court 
intrigues in which he himself was implicated. But under the circumstances 
the Council acted in accordance with Aryan law. Rajya-Vardhana had him- 
self acknowledged his brother's claim by leaving him in command at his 
capital during his absence. 

189 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

It could not be disputed that in an emergency like this a 
military leader of acknowledged capacity was the best fitted 
to assume the duties of kingship, and Harsha was not long in 
proving his right, though his consecration as king was deferred 
till some years later — not, as Mr Vincent Smith assumes, 
because Harsha had been disloyal to his brother and did not 
dare to assert his right to the crown before that time, but 
because it was usual for an Aryan king-elect to justify his 
nomination in the eyes of his subjects before the solemn rite 
of consecration was performed. The new king's first act was 
to set out on the difficult task of finding his sister's hiding- 
place in the Vindhya Mountains. Guided by friendly aborigi- 
nal tribes he at length threaded his way through primeval 
forests to her retreat, just in time to prevent Rajasri and her 
companions from throwing themselves in despair upon the 
sacrificial fire as satis. That a devoted follower of the Buddha, 
as Rajasri was, should contemplate this act as a religious duty 
is further proof that the I^aw of the Sangha was an adjust- 
ment rather than a revolution in ancient Aryan thought. 
Hiuen-Tsang describes how later on he met the widowed 
princess at Harsha's court. She was, he says, a lady of rare 
intelligence, learned in the doctrines of the Hinayanist Sam- 
mitiya school. But he succeeded in convincing both herself 
and her brother of the " narrow and erroneous ideas " of the 
Hinayana school, and henceforth they both became enthu- 
siastic followers of the Greater Vehicle. 

Harsha, like his sister, to whom he appears to have been 
deeply attached, was a pious Buddhist ; but this did not 
make him forget the tradition of kingship which from the 
days of Chandragupta Maurya had made it every Kshatriya's 
desire to unite India into one great Aryan empire, or under 
one umbrella. It can hardly be doubted that this desire, 
implicit in the dharma of a king whatever his religious beliefs 
might be, was prompted by considerations of wise statesman- 
ship and patriotic feeling and not merely by the lust of con- 
quest. Harsha himself, according to Hiuen-Tsang, belonged 
to the Vaisya caste by birth. Whether this was a mistake or 
190 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

not there is good reason for believing that in those days 
personal qualifications often overruled distinctions of birth, 
and a Vaisya, or even a Sudra, became a Kshatriya by the 
rite of consecration as king and was bound to regard the 
Kshatriya's dharma as his own. 

So immediately after his sister's safety had been secured 
Harsha, with a force consisting of 5000 elephants, 20,000 
cavalry, and 50,000 infantry, set out to punish the persecutor 
of the Sangha, the wicked King of Gaur — his brother's murderer 
— and to bring the ' Five Indies ' ^ under allegiance to himself. 
The campaign, says Hiuen-Tsang, lasted six years, and in 
that time apparently Harsha brought the greater part of 
Northern India under his banner and had considerably aug- 
mented his military resources. The details of the campaign 
are not completely recorded, but M3.1wa and Gaur were subdued, 
and before the end of his reign Harsha's rule was supreme in 
Aryavarta from sea to sea, as far south as the Narbada river, 
except over the kingdom of Gurjara, which included Rajputana, 
Northern Gujerat, and part of the Panjab. The growing 
strength of the southern states prevented him from repeating 
the exploits of Samudragupta ; for the Chalukyan king, 
Pulakesin II, about a.d. 620 successfully opposed his attempted 
passage of the Narbada, and compelled him to give up all 
hopes of conquest in the Dekhan or Southern India. 

With the exception of a few minor campaigns the rest of 
Harsha's reign was an unbroken peace. The court of Kanauj, 
the city which Harsha made his capital instead of Thaneshar, 
became famous for the philosophers, poets, dramatists, and 
painters upon whom the liberal patronage of Harsha and the 
Princess Rajasri was bestowed, Harsha himself had been 
thoroughly trained in all the accomplishments of Indo-Aryan 
royalty, and was equally skilful with the pen as with the 
sword. He was a poet of no mean merit, and his songs, set 
to music by himself, became popular throughout Aryavarta. 

^ The ' Five Indies' were Svarasta (the Panjab), Kanyakubja (Kanauj), 
Gaur (Bengal), Mithila (Durbhanga), and Orissa. (D. C. Sen, History oj 
Bengali Language and Literature, p. 385.) 

191 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Three Sanskrit plays attributed to him, the Ndgdnda, the 
Ratndvall, and the Priyddarsikd, are still extant and reckoned 
among the best works the Indian drama has produced. He 
also wrote a treatise on Sanskrit grammar, and was a keen 
listener to the philosophical debates which always formed a 
part of the distractions of Aryan aristocracy. Though his 
patronage was principally bestowed upon Buddhists he did 
not neglect the learned men of other sects, and a Brahman 
court poet, Bana, was the author of an epic, the Harsha- 
karita, describing Harsha's campaigns and the events of liis 
reign. 

But it is to the learned Chinese Master of the Ivaw, Hiuen- 
Tsang, that we are indebted for the most impartial and vivid 
account of India in the seventh century a.d. He was about 
twenty-nine years of age and already known as a learned and 
eloquent exponent of Mahayanist doctrine when in 629 he 
set out on his pilgrimage to obtain further knowledge 
and authentic texts in the famous monasteries of India, 
especially with regard to the science of Yoga, which then 
apparently was treated as heretical by the Hinayana schools, 
though it formed one of the principal tenets of the Great 
Vehicle. 

India, says Hiuen-Tsang, was known as the I^and of the 
Moon. He gives a mystical explanation of the term, likening 
human existences since the sun of the Buddha set to a long 
dark night illumined only by the light given by a succession 
of wise and holy teachers. But India, or Aryavarta, before 
the Buddha's time had been known as the land of King 
Soma, the Moon, and so called on account of its supposed 
resemblance in shape to the crescent moon, or ' digit ' of the 
moon, a symbol long afterwards used for the standard of 
Islam. The night was the time for meditation, and an imme- 
morial Aryan tradition had fixed the crescent-shaped bend 
of a river, or any similar land formation, as a holy place and 
the most auspicious site for a hermitage or Brahman asram. 
The cult of the night sky — ^Varuna or Vishnu-Narayana — and 
of Chandra, or Soma, had been the Brahman counterpart of 
192 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

the ancient sun-worship of the Kshatriyas represented by 
Indra or Vishnu-Surya. 

Sixteen years elapsed before Hiuen-Tsang returned to his 
native land. A great part of that time was spent in the 
monasteries at Nalanda and other places, but the pilgrim 
gives vivid accounts of his adventures on the road and his 
experiences as an honoured guest at various royal courts. He 
also makes many observations on the character and condition 
of the people, and the state of the different parts of India he 
visited. The disorder created by the Hun invasions was 
shown by the dangers to which travellers were exposed by 
bands of outlaws. On one occasion the pilgrim and his com- 
panions were seized by river pirates. His fine figure and 
handsome face reminded them that the proper time for sacrifice 
to their dread goddess Durga was at hand. Hiuen-Tsang was 
led to an improvised altar by two of the bandits with drawn 
swords, but his fearless mien so impressed his captors that 
they granted his request for a few moments' respite that he 
might pray to " enter into Nirvana with a peaceful and happy 
mind." The pious Master of the I^aw then fixed his thoughts 
upon the Tusita heavens and upon the Buddha that is to come, 
imploring Maitreya to descend to earth to instruct and convert 
his cruel captors and make them abandon their infamous 
profession. In the midst of his devotions a furious sandstorm 
arose which so terrified the brigands that when Hiuen-Tsang 
opened his eyes he found them kneeling at his feet begging 
forgiveness and instruction from one whose power over the 
spirits of the air proved him to be a deity. They then threw 
their weapons into the Ganges, restored the property they 
had stolen from Hiuen-Tsang and his fellow-travellers, and 
took leave of him vowing that thenceforth they would follow 
the teaching of the Good I^aw. 

The conditions varied greatly in different parts of the 
country, but in the more settled districts, where a strong 
central government existed, Hiuen-Tsang, like his predecessor 
two centuries earlier, found good roads and free rest-houses 
with food and medical attendance provided for needy travellers 

N 193 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and pilgrims. In other matters Hiuen-Tsang confirmed Fa- 
Hien's testimony with regard to the good government of the 
country. Taxes were light, the royal revenues being chiefly 
derived from the leasing of Crown lands. " Families are not 
registered, and individuals are not subject to forced labour 
contributions. Of the royal land there is a fourfold division : 
one part is for the expenses of government and State worship ; 
one for the endowment of great public servants ; one to reward 
high intellectual eminence; and one for acquiring religious 
merit by gifts to various sects. Taxation being light and 
forced service being sparingly used, every one keeps to his 
hereditary occupation and attends to his patrimony. The 
king's tenants pay one-sixth of the produce as rent. Trades- 
men go to and fro bartering their merchandise after paying 
light duties at ferries and barrier stations." ^ 

Among the numerous anecdotes with which the Chinese 
pilgrim enlivens his memoirs is one which explains Indo- 
Aryan constitutional law with regard to the levy of royal 
taxes. Vikramaditya, King of Sravasti, he says, after he had 
reduced the * Five Indies ' to submission was so lavish in the 
distribution of largesse to the poor and needy that his treasurer 
became alarmed and in a courtly way tried to bring home to 
the King what the result of his extravagance would be. He 
begged the King to double his largesse by distributing five 
lakhs more of gold coins among the poor from all quarters. 
Then the Treasury would be completely exhausted and new 
taxes would have to be imposed. This, said he, would bring 
to the King unbounded popularity, for he would have the 
people's gratitude for his generosity ; but the ministers {who 
would have the responsibility for imposing new taxes) would 
bear the public insults and reproaches. The King paid no 
heed to the Treasurer's polite remonstrance, but taking him 
at his word gave an additional five lakhs to the poor. The 
moral of the story came as usual at the end, when Vikra- 
maditya lost his kingdom and was succeeded by another king 
who " showed respect to men of eminence," ^ 

^ Walters' translation, vol. i, p. 176. ^ /jf^.^ vol. 1, pp. 211-212. 

194 



1 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

It is interesting to note that voluntary service and not 
conscription was the method of recruitment for the imperial 
forces. " Those who are employed in the Government service 
are paid according to their work. They go abroad on military 
service or they guard the palace ; summonses are issued 
according to circumstances, and after proclamation of the 
reward the enrolment is awaited." ^ This implies that men 
of the Kshatriya caste were not bound to render military 
service by reason of their birth, and though according to the 
law books the functions of royalty were reserved for the 
Kshatriyas it is questionable whether this implied more than 
that any Aryan freeman might become ' Kshatriya ' by per- 
forming the dharma of that class of society. Among the 
kings mentioned by Hiuen-Tsang some were Brahmans, others 
were Kshatriya, Vaisya, or Stidra. But a king certainly ranked 
as Kshatriya by virtue of his consecration in the rite of Raja- 
suya, when he was anointed by a representative of each of the 
' twice-born ' castes. There is no record of a king-elect being 
refused consecration on account of his being a Sudra by birth. 

Of the people of India Hiuen-Tsang speaks in terms of the 
highest respect and without narrow sectarian prejudice. He 
notices customs of Vaishnava and Saiva ascetics which are 
foUowed in the present day : " Some wear peacocks' tails ; 
some adorn themselves with a necklet of skulls ; some are 
quite naked ; some cover their bodies with grass or boards ; 
some pull out their hair and clip their moustaches ; some mat 
their side-hair and make a top-knot coil. Their clothing is 
not fixed and the colour varies." ^ 

Occasionally he was shocked by the " rude, bad ways and 
the low, vulgar speech " of the people, but generally they were 
fond of learning, well instructed, and most kindly disposed 
towards him. " They believed in the working of Karma and 
paid respect to moral and intellectual eminence." ^ He did 
not find all the virtues among his co-religionists : sometimes 
the most thorough believers were bigoted, quarrelsome, 

^ Walters' translation, vol. i, p. 176. 

2 Ibid., vol. i, p. 148. 3 iii^^^ yoi^ i^ p 201. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

vituperative, and of very shallow learning. Even among the 
non-Buddhist population he found people with honest, sincere 
ways, who applied themselves to learning and were fond of 
religious merit, though they sought the joys of this life." ^ 
Brahmans and Kshatriyas were " clean-handed and unosten- 
tatious, pure and simple in life, and very frugal." ^ The 
former kept their principles and lived continently, strictly 
observing ceremonial purity : the latter were the race of 
kings and had held sovereignty for many generations, and 
their aims were benevolence and mercy. 

Fa-Hien hardly stopped to observe anything which was not 
Buddhist ; but the more open-minded Hiuen-Tsang gives 
much information regarding the different religious sects. 
Buddhism though it counted the great King Harsha among 
its followers by no means enjoyed a monopoly either of temporal 
or spiritual power. The King of Assam, one of Harsha's 
principal vassals, was an orthodox Brahman. There were but 
few Buddhists left in Gandhara, and its once flourishing towns 
and villages were desolate. The Jains were influential in 
Southern India. Pataliputra, Asoka's capital, was mostly in 
ruins. Gaya had but few inhabitants. The great Bodhi Tree 
there had been uprooted by the wicked King Sasanka, who 
murdered Harsha's brother, but the Raja of Pataliputra, 
Purnavarma, the last descendant of Asoka's line, had replanted 
it and built a stone wall to protect it. 

Hiuen-Tsang has much to say about educational matters, 
both with regard to popular instruction and the higher learning 
of the monasteries. Brahman and Buddhist teachers vied 
with each other in devotion to their duties. The brethren of 
the Sangha often met together to sharpen their wits in intel- 
lectual contests and to promote the moral aims of their Order. 
Those who most distinguished themselves by profound learn- 
ing and dialectical skill were given precedence and special 
privileges — ^the highest being the honours accorded to royalty, 
or the grant of a richly caparisoned elephant and a large retinue 

^ Watters' translation, vol. i, p. 330. 
2 Ibid., vol. i, p. 151. 
196 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

of monks to attend on them. On the other hand, those who 
only displayed their ignorance and broke the rules of the Order 
might be ignominiously expelled from the monastery with 
their faces daubed with red and white clay and their bodies 
covered with dirt. I^earning, however, was not the monopoly 
of the Buddhist monks or Brahmans. A man who delighted 
in wisdom could study diligently at home and be a monk or 
layman as he pleased.^ 

There was an organised system of popular education. 
Children began by learning the alphabet and the Siddhan, or 
Siddhi-astu, a primer containing twelve chapters. At seven 
years of age they passed on to the study of the ' Five Sdstras,' 
or sciences, beginning with grammar. The second Sastra was 
" the science of arts and crafts," the third medical science, 
the fourth logic, and the fifth the principles of philosophy. 
All these departments of knowledge formed a system of general 
education for laymen of all sects. In theory, at least, Indian 
educationists of the seventh century a.d. seem to have devised 
a system of public instruction far superior to that of the 
present day. 

The method of teaching was oral. Hiuen-Tsang praises the 
earnestness and diligence of the teachers. Brahman as well 
as Buddhist. They began by explaining the general meaning 
of the lesson ; then they carefully analysed the details, point 
by point. They inspired their pupils to exert themselves, and 
skilfully led them forward step by step. " They instruct the 
inert and sharpen the dull." They took pains even with idle 
shirkers, doggedly repeating instruction until their disciples 
were fully qualified. This was not, however, generally achieved 
before the latter were thirty years of age — ^then " their minds 
were settled and they went into office : and the first thing 
they do is to reward the kindness of their teachers." ^ Hiuen- 
Tsang gives high praise to the wandering bhikkus or sadhus, 
men deeply versed in antique wisdom and possessing the 
culture accumulated by constant travel, who, though some- 

1 Walters' translation, vol. i, p. 162. 
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 160. 

197 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

times belonging to wealthy families, were content to live a 
life of poverty apart from the world unmoved by honour or 
reproach. " For them there is honour in knowing truth and 
no disgrace in being destitute." ^ Wandering continually from 
place to place, no fatigue was too great when an opportunity 
offered of gaining knowledge, or of using their own for helping 
others. Those who were famed for their wisdom were treated 
with the highest respect ; but not even the honours which 
kings could bestow tempted them to forsake the path of know- 
ledge. The influence of these pious men must have been felt 
far beyond the borders of India, for they recognised no political 
barriers nor any distinctions of race. 

The great monasteries described by Hiuen-Tsang were 
Buddhist, but they were real universities of learning and non- 
sectarian so far that in some cases followers of the main 
divisions — ^the Hinayana and Mahayana — dwelt together in 
the same monastery. Some were famous for particular 
sciences, like Taksha-sila for its school of medicine, and Ujjain 
for astronomy. Nalanda, where Hiuen-Tsang stayed some 
years, was the Oxford of Mahayana Buddhism ; the rival of 
Benares, which was the stronghold of orthodox Brahmanical 
learning. Nevertheless it was entirely eclectic in its teaching, 
for the eighteen Hinayana sects were represented there, and 
among the different recognised branches of learning were 
included the Vedas, medicine, and mathematics. The resident 
monks took precedence according to the range of their study 
rather than their excellence in one particular branch. Among 
the ten thousand within and without the walls, one thousand 
were accounted proficient in ten works upon the Sutras 
and Sastras ; five hundred had graduated in thirty ; ten 
only, including Hiuen-Tsang himself, in fifty ; while the 
venerable Abbot, Silabhadra, was reputed master of every 
work which had any bearing upon the knowledge of the Right 
I^aw. 

The wandering bhikkus had carried reports of the Chinese 
pilgrim's great learning from monastery to monastery through- 
1 Walters' translation, vol. i, p. 162. 

iq8 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

out Magadha, so that on approaching Nalanda lie was met by 
a deputation sent by the Abbot, and was accompanied to the 
gates of the monastery by an imposing escort carrying baimers 
and State umbrellas and burning incense. He was garlanded 
and ceremoniously invited to be a guest of the monastery, and 
then conducted to the presence of the Abbot, the venerable 
Silabhadra, "the Treasure of the Right I^aw," who received 
him with the utmost kindness and assigned to him sumptuous 
quarters and an ample supply of fruit and other provisions, 
including a special kind of rice of very large grain and fine 
flavour which was cultivated only in Magadha and reserved 
exclusively for the cuisine of royalty and of monks of great 
distinction who were accorded royal honours. 

The monastery, says Hiuen-Tsang, had been originally a 
mango orchard — no doubt with a garden mansion attached 
to it — belonging to a rich landowner, which had been purchased 
for a large sum by five hundred merchants who were disciples 
of the Buddha, and presented to the Master. The Buddha 
himself had hved there for three months preaching to his 
merchant disciples, many of whom had thus obtained the 
fruit of the Bodhi Tree. Five successive kings had added to 
its buildings and endowments, so that now it was the largest 
and richest of all the monasteries of India. The last of its 
royal benefactors had enclosed all the different buildings by 
a high wall. 

Hiuen-Tsang, in flowery language, describes the high towers 
" piercing the mists of the morning," from the windows of 
which one could watch the glowing sunset and meditate on 
the serene beauty of the moonlight. The numerous pillared 
halls and pavilions were richly carved and painted, filled with 
precious shrines and glowing with colour and brilliant jewelled 
adornment. In the gardens the thick groves of mango trees 
afforded a grateful shade, while the kanaka trees {Butea frondosa) 
with their festoons of brilliant red flowers, the fountains and 
serpentine canals of clear water filled with blue lotuses, were 
more beautiful than he had seen anywhere. The monasteries 
of India, he said, could be counted in thousands, but none 

199 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

equalled Nalanda in the grandeur, ricliness, and loftiness of 
its construction. 

The discipline maintained by the monks was so admirable 
that there was no record of any infringement of the rules in 
the seven hundred years since the abbey had been founded : 
the brethren of Nalanda were looked up to by all India both 
for their conduct and learning. There the days were all too 
short for study and discussion : " day and night they admon- 
ished each other, juniors and seniors mutually helping to 
perfection." The revenue of a hundred villages had been 
assigned by the State for the endowment of the abbey, so that 
the monks and their disciples were well provided with the 
necessaries of life, and the instruction given was gratuitous. 
Many foreign students came there, attracted by the fame of 
the university and by the prestige they could win by using 
its name in their own country, but the standard of learning 
was so high that few succeeded in gaining admittance to the 
advanced debating schools. 

It was while Hiuen-Tsang was at Nalanda studying the 
Yoga-sdstra and other works under the direction of the learned 
Abbot that he was invited by Bhaskaravarma, or Kumara, 
the King of Kamarupa (Assam and Eastern Bengal), one of 
Harsha's most powerful allies, to pay a visit to his court. 
This king was an orthodox Brahman, but, true to the tradi- 
tions of his caste, he treated all learned men with respect, 
and the colleges of his country, like Nalanda, attracted students 
from many quarters, though Buddhism did not prosper there. 
The monks of Nalanda implored Hiuen-Tsang to remain, but 
after the Abbot had received several urgent letters from 
Kumara he reluctantly gave his consent, and so the pilgrim 
packed up his precious collection of manuscripts and images, 
took leave of his beloved Alma Mater, and went. Kumara 
had heard of Hiuen-Tsang's profound scholarship from a 
Brahman who had presumed to challenge the Chinese doctor, 
and had been compelled to acknowledge his inferiority in 
debate. Hiuen-Tsang was received by the King and his 
ministers with the highest honours and installed as a guest 

200 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

in the royal palace, where he was entertained lavishly for a 
month and overwhelmed with valuable presents. 

In the meantime Harsha had received information that 
Hiuen-Tsang, who had previously declined several invitations 
to attend the imperial court, was now Kumara's guest, and 
immediately sent a peremptory message to his vassal to 
despatch the learned Chinese monk to Kanauj at once. Kumara 
airily replied, " I would rather send my head than let your 
Majesty have the Master of the Law," but when the imperial 
messenger returned with a demand for the fulfilment of 
Kumara's first offer he saw it was no joking matter and set 
out to accompany Hiuen-Tsang in royal state to Kanauj 
himself. Harsha was touring in his dominions and met the 
procession on its way to his capital, and was not less lavish 
than his vassal had been in the honours he bestowed upon 
Hiuen-Tsang, only reproaching him gently for not having 
come at his first invitation. " Master," said he, " your disciple 
invited you to come before. Why did you not come ? " 
" I journeyed to far countries," replied Hiuen-Tsang, " to 
find the Law of the Buddha. I was stud3dng the Yoga-chdrya- 
hhumi-Sdstra when your Majesty's order came, but I had not 
finished hearing the explanation of it. That is why I did not 
come immediately to pay my respects to your Majesty." 
Harsha accepted the explanation as satisfactory, and then 
proceeded to question Hiuen-Tsang on a subject which interested 
both Kumara and himself deeply — ^the origin of a celebrated 
Chinese song and dance known as " The Music of Ch'in- Wang's 
Victory " and " The Dance of the Seven Virtues," composed 
to celebrate the suppression of a formidable rebellion in 6ig,^ 
and thereafter performed on great occasions at the Chinese 
imperial court. 

Hiuen-Tsang gives a pleasing account of Harsha's personal 
character and his life as a sovereign ruler. He was indefatigable 
in the discharge of his administrative duties, spending most 
of the year in making tours of inspection throughout his 
dominions, setting a good example to his ministers and to the 
1 Watters' translation, vol. i, pp. 349-350. 

201 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

kings who were his vassals, and showing favour only to those 
who were as zealous as himself in good works. Like Asoka 
he forbade the killing of animals for food, and built thousands 
of stupas and monasteries besides travellers' rest-houses and 
similar benevolent institutions. He was lavish in the distribu- 
tion of alms to religious devotees of all sects. At the royal 
lodges a thousand Buddhist monks and five hundred Brahmans 
were fed every day. The chapter-houses and assembly halls 
were furnished with supplies and decorated with sculpture and 
painting. Over the affairs of the Sangha, as in other official 
matters, he kept strict control. Besides the great Quinquennial 
Assembly which was regularly held, the Sangha was called 
together yearly for discussion and examination, for the reward 
of moral and intellectual merit and the punishment of offenders 
against the rules of discipUne. 

In the early part of his reign Harsha, like his sister — ^who is 
said to have assisted him in the administration of the empire — 
inclined to the doctrines of the Little Vehicle ; but a treatise 
which Hiuen-Tsang wrote and presented to the Emperor 
convinced both of them of the superior merit of Mahayanist 
teaching, and he immediately gave orders that a General 
Assembly of the Order should be summoned to the capital, 
Kanauj , so that the Master of the Law might argue the matter 
with all the religious teachers of his realm. The Assembly 
thus convoked was a great State function attended by the 
Emperor and his whole court, and by eighteen tributary kings 
who responded to the summons. There were two thousand 
Brahman and Jain pandits, and four thousand representatives of 
Hinayana and Mahayana teaching, including about a thousand 
monks from the Nalanda monastery. Some of these great 
church dignitaries were mounted on elephants, others were 
carried in palanquins ; they were attended by a numerous 
suite with banners, standards, and other ecclesiastical para- 
phernalia. The multitude which thronged to listen to the 
debate was immense. 

An imposing pavilion covered with thatch was erected for 
the learned members of the convocation, and a great image 

202 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

of the Buddha, equal in stature to the Emperor, was placed 
under a lofty thatched tower adjoining it. From the descrip- 
tion we may infer that this temporary shrine was a royal 
travelling lodge covered by a sikhara, like a Vishnu temple, 
and that the convocation met in a great mandapam built in 
front of it. The Emperor's camp was pitched at some distance 
from the place of assembly. On the appointed day, early in 
A.D. 644, a golden image of the Buddha, specially wrought for 
the occasion, was placed in a jewelled shrine upon the back 
of a gorgeously caparisoned elephant. The Emperor himself, 
attired as the guardian Deva of the Kshatriya caste, Indra, 
held one of the emblems of royalty — a yak-tail fly-flap — over 
the image on the right hand, while his ally, the Brahman King 
Kumara, personifying the Ishta-devata of his own caste, 
Brahma, held a State umbrella over it on the other side. The 
Master of the lyaw and the ministers of State, also mounted on 
elephants, rode behind, and, joined by the splendid procession 
of the tributary rajas, the stately pageant moved on to 
the place of the assembly, Harsha and Kumara scattering 
largesse of gold, pearls, and other precious substances along the 
route. 

At the gate of the grand pavilion Harsha and the rest of 
the imperial procession dismoimted, and the sacred image 
was placed upon a throne prepared for it with the usual 
religious ceremonial, at which the Emperor assisted as high 
priest. Then the distinguished members of the convocation 
were conducted to their seats, and after refreshments had been 
served and presents distributed Harsha invited Hiuen-Tsang 
to take his seat as president and open the debate. 

It is hardly necessary to say that the effect of his discourse 
was entirely satisfactory to the adherents of the Mahayanist 
school. Hiuen-Tsang's eloquence, supported by the Emperor's 
presence, was overpowering. The learned Master of the I^aw, 
anticipating lyUther, nailed his thesis to the gateway of the 
pavilion as a challenge to his opponents with a postscript at 
the foot of it — " If anyone here can find a single wrong argu- 
ment and can refute it I will let him cut ofl my head " — a 

203 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

formula which appears to have been a part of the tradition 
of these pubHc disputations. No one ventured to take up the 
challenge, and Hiuen-Tsang remained in possession of the 
field until the evening, when Harsha returned to his camp 
delighted. If the Chinese pilgrim and his biographer can be 
trusted the same programme was repeated for eighteen days, 
to the utter confusion of all heretics and the joy of the Maha- 
yanists. But one account avers that the convocation was 
brought to an abrupt conclusion by the pavilion being set on 
fire by Hiuen-Tsang's opponents, and by an attempt on the 
Emperor's life by an armed fanatic, in consequence of which 
some of the conspirators were executed and five hundred 
Brahmans were expelled from Harsha's dominions. 

Whichever may be the true account, Harsha's esteem for 
the Chinese Master was only increased by his conduct of the 
Great Assembly. Hiuen-Tsang would not receive the marks 
of imperial favour offered him lavishly in the form of money 
and costly presents, but accepted an invitation to accompany 
Harsha to a great national festival held every five years at 
the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna. The tradition of 
the sacredness of the place, due to the crescent-shaped forma- 
tion of the land where the two holy rivers united, went back 
to the earliest Vedic times ; and the quinquennial distribution 
of royal bounty which was a part of the religious ceremonial 
probably had its origin in the ancient custom of the Dravidian 
forest settlement by which the redistribution of the communal 
lands took place every five years. 

The vast sandy plain to the west of the confluence had been 
known from time immemorial as ' the Place of Alms ' ; for 
charity bestowed upon that spot had for the giver many 
thousand times the merit of a similar act elsewhere. In this 
hallowed place it had been Harsha's custom every five years 
since his accession to distribute all the surplus of his treasury. 
The ceremony to which Hiuen-Tsang was invited was the 
sixth distribution. A great square space was marked off by 
stakes joined with festoons of roses, as in a Vedic sacrifice, 
and in the centre under a number of thatched sheds was piled 
204 




15. Trimurti Scui,pture, Ei,:Ephanxa 



204 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

a vast quantity of treasure, gold and silver work and jewellery 
wrought by the royal craftsmen. Surrounding these were long 
sheds filled with all kinds of costly fabrics, brocades, silks, 
and fine cottons, besides heaps of gold and silver coin. Out- 
side this quadrangle were a hundred pavilions ranged in long 
lines for the distribution of food, each pavilion seating a 
thousand persons. An imperial decree invited to the feast 
religious devotees of all sects, and all the poor and needy 
in the ' Five Indies.' 

A few weeks after the conclusion of the convocation at 
Kanauj, Harsha with the Princess Rajasri, with Hiuen-Tsang 
and the kings of the eighteen tributary states in his train, 
arrived at ' the Place of Alms,' where a great concourse of 
Buddhist, Brahman, and Jain ascetics and poor laymen number- 
ing half a million had assembled. The first three days of the 
festival were devoted to the worship of the Three Aspects of 
the One — the Trimurti. On the first day the rdjasic Aspect, 
represented by the Buddha, whose image was installed in a 
temporary shrine built upon the sands, was worshipped, the 
religious rites being accompanied by music, the offering of 
flowers, and the formal dedication of the most precious of the 
costly presents from the imperial treasury. On the second 
day, with similar rites, the sattvic Aspect of the Trimurti, 
represented by Vishnu under the name of Aditya, received 
adoration, and on the third day the tamasic Aspect, Siva, was 
worshipped. 

On the fourth day the distribution of the treasure thus 
solemnly dedicated to the service of God began. About 
10,000 Buddhist monks were fed, and each one received loo 
pieces of gold, a pearl, a cotton garment, and gifts of flowers 
and perfumes. The Brahmans were the next recipients of 
Harsha's bounty, the distribution lasting twenty days. Twenty 
days more were given to presenting gifts to Jain devotees and 
those of other sects, while another month passed away before 
all the destitute orphans and other poor laity had received 
their gifts. By that time, says Hiuen-Tsang, all the surplus 
of the imperial treasury accumulated in the last five years 

205 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

had been exhausted. There only remained the horses and 
elephants and the military accoutrements of the imperial forces 
which were necessary for maintaining order in the State. 
Harsha then began, in imitation of the Sakya Prince at the 
hour of the Great Renunciation, to take off his imperial tiara, 
necklet of pearls, jewelled earrings and bracelets, and to divest 
himself of his magnificent brocaded vesture, to add them to 
the treasure already distributed as alms. Then, begging from 
the Princess Rajasri a common worn garment, such as an 
ascetic might wear, he put it on and worshipped " the Buddhas 
of the ten regions," rejoicing that his riches were no longer 
hidden in a solid and impenetrable storehouse but scattered 
broadcast on the " field of divine merit." 

At the close of the great festival the eighteen kings purchased 
the imperial regalia, vestments, and other costly presents from 
the persons upon whom they had been bestowed, and oftered 
them to Harsha as the tribute due to him ; but in a few days' 
time the Kmperor had again distributed the most valuable in 
alms. 

When the time came for Hiuen-Tsang's departure both 
Harsha and Kumara begged insistently that he should remain 
in India, but finding that he could not be turned from his 
purpose of spreading the knowledge of the Right Ivaw in his 
native country they accompanied him along a part of the 
road and then, having provided him with ample means for 
the long journey, regretfully allowed him to proceed to the 
frontier under the protection of a royal escort. Hiuen-Tsang 
reached home in the early part of a.d. 645, with most of the 
precious relics, images, and manuscripts he had collected, and 
lived to translate seventy-four important Sanskrit works into 
Chinese. He died in 664, nineteen years after his return from 
India. 

The record which he left of his travels, which must, of course, 
be read with due allowance for the pilgrim's religious partisan- 
ship and for the mistakes both of his biographer and of the 
latter's transcribers, gives the impression of a remarkably 
keen and close observer, and is one of the most trustworthy 
206 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

iiistorical documents of the period. It is invaluable for the 
light it throws upon Harsha's administration both in secular 
and religious matters, and upon the psychology of Indian life 
in the seventh century. One important historical fact comes 
out clearly in his narrative — ^that the General Assembly of the 
Sangha was not, as might be supposed, ' Buddhist ' in the 
sectarian sense of modern writers, but a real Parliament of 
reUgions representative of all important schools of thought, 
Buddhist, Jain, and Brahmanical. And the real authority 
exercised by this Assembly in religious matters is shown by 
the fact that Harsha in his zeal for propagating Mahayanist 
doctrines did not attempt to use his power arbitrarily in the 
manner of the ' Oriental despot,' but sent his chosen guru, 
the Master of the Law, to argue the matter before the great 
pandits of the ' Five Indies.' It was the decision of this 
Assembly, after a long formal debate, which was ratified by 
Harsha in an imperial decree. 

Whether the Assembly was obsequious and did not dare to 
lift up its voice against the Emperor's emissary, whether 
Harsha tried to pack the Assembly and to prejudice its decision 
by methods well known even in the most democratic states 
of modern times, are irrelevant issues in deciding the principles 
of Indo-Aryan government and the methods employed in 
practising them. Another striking characteristic of Indian 
political life is the extraordinary deference shown by military 
rulers to the authorised exponents of national culture, the 
professional pandits. Europeans are accustomed in modern 
times to the spectacle of a coterie of State professors employed 
in explaining and justifying every act of a dominant military 
caste. But these modern professors of Kultur, however great 
their personal intellectual influence may be, hold a strictly 
subordinate position in the whole social system and never 
dare to assert any authority beyond the narrow sphere allotted 
to them by the State. In medieval times we have known 
many dignitaries of the Church competing on the battlefield 
for the control of the temporal arm and exercising the highest 
authority by virtue of the spiritual terrors they could invoke ; 

207 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

but there is no parallel in European history to the influence 
exercised by Indian philosophers in every grade of society, 
from the highest to the lowest, solely by reason of their superior 
intellectual qualities and personal virtues. The acknowledged 
champion in a great philosophical debate received, both before 
and after death, public honours as great as the warrior could 
win by a victorious campaign. There could be no better proof 
that the ethics of the State in ancient India were not entirely 
dictated by the sword, and that ' the humanities ' had at 
least as high a place in national life as they hold in the civilisa- 
tion of modern Europe. Neither in this matter is it necessary 
to inquire whether the extravagant respect accorded to men 
of learning tended to weaken the military strength of the 
State, or whether the exaltation of the scholar above the man 
of action confined economic progress to a very narrow groove. 
No civilisation in the world's history can be said to have 
achieved perfection, but the fact remains that, judged by 
standards of culture, Indian civilisation in the seventh century 
A.D. attained to a height which has not been exceeded by any 
other in ancient or modern times. 

Harsha's reign was also memorable for an epoch-making 
event, usually considered as outside the range of Indian history, 
the Hegira, which took place in 622. While that great religious 
impulse which had its centre in Magadha was bringing pilgrims 
from the Far East to study in the universities of India, an 
Arab teacher in Western Asia, fired by similar zeal, was calling 
on his fellow-tribesmen to join him in the worship of the One 
God and in the propagation of the truth of which Muhammad 
was the Prophet. Western criticism has been content to 
regard the event as a separate episode in the religious history 
of the world, and by divorcing it from its historical context to 
misrepresent its true spiritual significance. 

The process of the spiritual evolution of the human race 
becomes totally inexplicable if all the great world-religions are 
considered as mutually antagonistic and wholly autochthonous 
in origin. If the position of each religion in the general 
progress of mankind were estimated by its influence upon the 
208 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

civilisation of different races, instead of by dogmatic values, 
it would become obvious that every race, or racial group, must 
strive to discover the particular spiritual formula best adapted 
for the stage of evolution in which it finds itself, instead of 
seeking to establish the absolute superiority of one set of 
formulas over another. If Muhammad had been preaching 
to the General Assembly of the Sangha at Kanauj, instead of 
to the Arab tribes, the dogmas of Islam would certainly have 
been stated differently. It was not the philosophy of Islam, 
but its sociological programme, which won so many converts 
for it in India. 

Muhammad was a poet rather than a philosopher, and in 
the poetic frenzy of the Quran there is no evidence that the 
Prophet of Mecca drew direct inspiration from the deeply 
reasoned psychology which formed the original basis of the 
I^aw of Buddha. But in the seventh century a.d. the psycho- 
logical influence of Buddhism, especially outside India, was 
less dependent upon its philosophical teaching than upon the 
depth of the religious fervour which the spirit of bhakti evoked. 
The example of right living and right thinking which had 
been set by generations of the Buddha's devout disciples had 
been an inspiration to many religious teachers before Muham- 
mad. The spiritual impulse of which India had been the 
centre for over a thousand years was independent of dogmas 
and philosophies. It was borne along the highways of com- 
merce, by sea and land, to the furthest confines of Asia both 
in the east and west. And though the echoes of the debating 
halls of India may not have resounded upon the coasts of 
Arabia so clearly as they did among the hills of the further 
East, the doctrine of the Unity of the Godhead implicit in the 
theory of the One in Many was probably as familiar to the 
camel-drivers of Arabian caravans as it was to the students of 
China long before the Prophet raised the banner of Islam. 

Muhammad was an inspired teacher who skilfully adapted 
his theological formulas to Arabian tribal traditions, in the 
same way as the Buddha had established the Law upon the 
traditions of the Indo-Ar^^an village community. If he was 

o 209 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

not as familiar with Indian religious thought as he was with 
the teaching of Christianity he certainly caught the spirit of 
bhakti which was common to them both. The conflict between 
Islam and Hinduism was chiefly on matters of ritual, like the 
disputes in the Christian Church. On higher spiritual grounds 
the Brahman pandit and the mulla easily found a modus 
Vivendi, for India was a motherland to them both. 

Hiuen-Tsang gives some indication of the western extension 
of Buddhism in his time by the mention he makes of Hinayana 
monasteries in Persia. Alberuni, the Arabian historian of the 
eleventh century, states that " in former times Khurasan, 
Persia, 'Irak [Mesopotamia], Mosul, and the country up to the 
frontiers of Syria were Buddhistic." ^ 

In the seventh century a.d. Japan was the furthest outpost 
of Indo-Aryan religion in the Bast : it is more than probable 
that Mecca, a town closely connected with Indo-Arabian 
coasting trade, was one of its outposts in the West. The 
iconoclastic rage which animated the Prophet and his disciples 
indicates that the ritual of Hinayana Buddhism, ^ which doubt- 
less retained more of its pristine simplicity and austerity in 
its outlying mission fields than it did in India itself, appealed 
more strongly to the Arab tribesmen than the exuberant 
symbolism of the Mahayanist school. It was upon Maha- 
yanists in particular that the fury of the onslaught of Islam 
vented itself in India, though Arab historians in recording the 
wholesale destruction of monasteries and temples which marked 
the progress of the Musalman invaders were indifferent to 
distinctions of sect. * Bauddha temples ' was a contemptuous 
term applied to all Indian places of worsliip. 

Already in Harsha's time the conquering Arabs had advanced 
as near to India as Baluchistan, then part of the dominions of 

^ Alberuni's India, translated by E. G. Sachau, vol. i, p. 21. 

• The Buddha forbade " imaginative drawings painted in figures of men 
and women," but allowed the bhikkus to draw and paint " representations 
of wreaths and creepers, and bone hooks and cupboards " (Chullavagga, vi, 
3, 2) . (The latter category no doubt refers to the names of traditional patterns.) 
Thus Muhammadan law was practically identical in this respect with that of 
HinaySna Buddhism. 
210 



HARSHA AND THE HEGIRA 

the Buddhist Raja of Sind, Diwaji, who lost his life in opposing 
them. In 646 Sahasi, Diwaji's grandson, met the same fate, 
and early in the eighth century the Arabs had overrun Sind 
and established themselves there permanently. But it was 
not until two centuries later that the great Muhammadan 
invasion which ended in the conquest of the greater part 
of India began. The first Arab invasions were the attacks of 
religious enthusiasts whose only philosophy was the sword : 
in the subsequent invasions plunder and the lust of conquest 
were the primary motives with the great majority of the 
followers of Islam, as they had been with the Hellenic, Turki, 
and Scythian marauders of former times. 

The artistic history of Harsha's reign, so far as the north 
of India is concerned, is a continuation of that of the Gupta 
period. Vishnu's sikhara continued to be the characteristic 
feature of temple architecture, whether the sectarian dedication 
of it were Buddhist, Jain, or Brahmanical. The temple of 
Parasuramesvar at Bhuvanesvar, which probably belongs 
to the seventh century, may be taken as a typical building of 
the period. The Duma Lena at Ellora, which is almost an 
exact copy on a larger scale of the Elephanta temple, may 
have been partly excavated in Harsha's time, though Ellora, 
like Ajanta, was beyond the southern boundaries of Harsha's 
dominions and came under Pulakesin's jurisdiction. The 
noble sculptural facade of the adjoining Ramesvaram temple 
is also typical seventh-century work. 



211 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

FROM THE SEVENTH TO THE 

ELEVENTH CENTURIES 

HARSHA died in 648, a few years after the departure of 
Hiuen-Tsang from Kanauj. His death was the signal 
for fresh poHtical troubles in Northern India ; but 
before continuing the dynastic history of the North it is neces- 
sary to turn our attention to the Dekhan, where Pulakesin II, 
Harsha's powerful rival, riiled from about 610. The Chalukyan 
dynasty, of which Pulakesin was the fourth representative, 
was said, as before stated, to be of Rajput, or Kshatriya, 
descent, and the inhabitants of Maharashtra, the chief province 
of Pulakesin's dominions, were, says Hiuen-Tsang, warlike 
and proud-spirited, " grateful for favours and revengeful for 
wrongs, self-sacrificing towards suppliants in distress and 
sanguinary to death with any who treated them insultingly. 
Their martial heroes who led the van of the army in battle 
went into conflict intoxicated, and their war-elephants were 
also made drunk before an engagement. Relying on the 
strength of his heroes and elephants, the King treated neigh- 
bouring cotmtries with contempt." ^ 

Pulakesin's reign began and ended with wars, offensive and !ij 
defensive. On his northern frontier he successfully opposed !' 
Harsha's attacks ; on the south he was constantly struggling 
with the Pallava King of Kanchi, Narasimhavarman ; and in 
the east he held the Kalinga power in check. About 630 ,; 
Pulakesin exercised suzerainty over the greater part of Southern 'i 
India, including the Chola, Pandya, and Kerala kingdoms. He 

1 Watters' translation, vol. ii, p. 239. 
212 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

also entered into diplomatic relations with Kushrau II, King 
of Persia — perhaps for the purpose of checking Harsha's ambi- 
tions — an event which is supposed to be recorded in one of 
the fresco paintings of the monastic hall at Ajanta now known 
as Cave I, 

But the main interest of the history of the seventh century 
in the Dekhan and Southern India is centred in the rise of 
Saivism, the school of philosophy which then began to domi- 
nate the religious thought and architecture of the South as 
Vaishnavism was taking the lead in the North. We have 
already seen how Vaishnavism was essentially a Kshatriya 
cult, a philosophical development of the idea of the king as 
the protector and father of his people, and having its archi- 
tectural symbol in the tower of the king's fortress palace 
idealised into a temple of Vishnu, the Preserver of the Universe. 
Saivism was the corresponding cult of the Brahman ascetic, 
opposing to the Vaishnava ideal an austere and pessimistic 
view of life which only regarded the vanity of human existence, 
the impermanence and unreality of natural phenomena. It 
is, however, as great a mistake to suppose that Saivism origi- 
nated in the seventh century as to suppose that Vaishnavism 
began in the fourth or fifth ; and a still greater error to accept 
the dictum of archaeological writers that Saivism is a Dravidian 
superstition assimilated and adapted by Brahmanism. It is 
doubtless true that many gross superstitions fastened them- 
selves upon the external forms of Saiva religion — such is the 
case with all religions — but the esoteric ideas of Saivism are 
as purely Aryan in their origin as those of Buddhism and 
certainl3^ not less ancient. 

Both Vaishnavism and Saivism have their root in the very 
beginnings of Aryan religion. Buddhism in the sixth century 
B.C. was a compromise accepted for a time by the great majority 
of Aryan thinkers, Vaishnava and Saiva, though in its pessi- 
mistic view of life and in its ritualistic symbolism early Bud- 
dhism inclined more to the Saiva ideal. But even in early 
Buddhism it is easy to distinguish the two ideals — ^the Buddha 
as King and Protector and the Buddha as the Seer and Ascetic : 

213 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the two types of miniature votive shrines strewn in hundreds 
among the dSbris of Sarnath bring out the difference clearly. 
The sikhara type is the offering of the pious layman, the 
stupa type that of the monk or devotee. The distinction 
became more marked within the Sangha itself when the Vaish- 
nava, or Mahayana, section of the Order detached itself from 
the Saiva, or Hinayana, about the beginning of the Christian 
era. Up to this time the General Assembly or Parliament of 
religions which regulated the spiritual affairs of Aryavarta 
was entirely non-sectarian in the sense that it represented 
all denominations except the small minority of extremists and 
irreconcilables. There was no doubt a Kshatriya or Brahman 
opposition, not influential enough to control the debates, 
though sufficiently important to make its voice heard and to 
shape the policy of the Assembly. But in course of time the 
philosophical creed of this party became more defined, and 
having been formulated in the Bhagavad Gita it was adopted 
by the first Gupta emperors as the authorised Vaishnava 
doctrine. The fourth century a.d. may therefore be taken as 
the approximate period of the formation of the new Vaishnava 
party with a clear constructive programme in opposition to 
both Mahayana and Hinayana policy, though it was evidently 
less widely separated from the former than from the latter. 
From the fourth to the seventh centuries there is good evidence 
that these three religious parties, the Vaishnava, Mahayana, 
and Hinayana, alternately shared spiritual and temporal power 
in the State — ^the two former having more influence in the 
north of India and the latter in the south. But at the same 
time a fourth group or party, representative of Brahman 
opinion, was gradually being formed within the Hinayana 
group, in sympathy with the ascetic ideals of the latter, but 
with more pronounced theological views and a more comprehen- 
sive philosophical programme. This party set up Siva as the 
ideal of Brahman asceticism in the place of Sakya Muni, the 
ideal of the Buddhist monastery, and taking the Upanishads 
for a starting-point elaborated a new rationalistic theory of 
the First Cause in opposition to the agnostic philosophy of 
214 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

the Buddha upon which both the Hinayana and Mahayana 
systems were based. 

This new Saiva school, the especial cult of Brahmanism as 
distinguished from Vaishnavism, which was the favourite cult 
of Kshatriyas, was not without royal patrons even before the 
seventh century, but until the appearance of its great exponent 
Sankaracharya in the eighth or beginning of the ninth century 
it lacked a powerful interpreter to argue its philosophical tenets 
convincingly in the universities and pubhc debating halls of 
the land, so that for a long time it remained an inconspicuous 
minority in the Great Assembly, and none of the Kings of 
Elings or Ivords Paramount of Aryavarta lent their powerful 
influence in propagating its doctrines as they did to the rival 
Vaishnava school. But it is quite possible, and indeed prob- 
able, that Saivism in some form had been the dominant cult 
in the asrams of Brahman ascetics during the whole period of 
Buddhist political ascendancy. 

The break-up of poUtical unity in Aryavarta which so often 
followed the death of a strong ruler like Vikramaditya and 
Harsha no doubt had its effect in promoting the growth of 
independent parties in reUgious matters. In Indian history 
poUtics cannot be detached from reHgion. In Europe, and 
especially in England, the struggle to create a free political 
constitution was so severe that religious controversies took a 
subordinate place to the questions at issue between King and 
Parliament. But in India political freedom had been built 
upon the basis of the village republics from the earUest period 
of her history, and no Buddhist or Hindu king attempted to 
curtail the right to administer their own affairs which the 
village republics enjoyed under the Aryan system of constitu- 
tional government. There was no struggle for freedom of 
conscience or for the pohtical rights of individuals because 
both were estabUshed by the unwritten law of the land, 
confirmed by every monarch in his coronation oath. 

India's Magna Carta was contained in her constitutional 
law, a digest of the Acts of the Sabha or tribal Parliament, 
which were as sacred as the Vedas or the sayings of the Buddha. 

215 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Religion took the foremost place in the political history of 
India by a natural psychological process, because when the 
preliminary steps in social evolution were passed — freedom of 
conscience, and a sufficient measure of personal hberty to 
ensure the contentment and material prosperity of the com- 
munity — all impediments to the attainment of the highest 
goal of intellectual effort — spiritual freedom — had been removed. 
Political liberty was held to be safe in the keeping of the king 
and his ministers : the Parliament of religions, whose functions 
were to lay down the law of the universal life, by observing 
which all men could live sanely and well, became invested 
with an authority which not even the king could dispute. 
But when every petty state had its own Great Assembly the 
Lords Spiritual who came to regulate the religious instruction 
of the people no longer spoke with the united voice of the 
' Five Indies ' because they were only representative of a few 
local sects. The more the political unity of India was broken 
up the more religious differences tended to become localised. 

The architectural history of India shows how the rise of 
the new Saiva sect in the seventh century synchronised with 
the growth of the political power of the Dekhan and Southern 
India. But Fergusson's architectural nomenclature is wholly 
misleading, because he implies that ' Dravidian ' temples, which, 
with few exceptions, follow Saiva symbolism in their structure, 
are non-Aryan : whereas all the architectural traditions of 
Southern India are as much Aryan as those of the North, and 
Sankaracharya, the great apostle of the Saivas, took his stand 
upon the Vedas, the fountain-head of all Aryan religious 
teaching. 

The structure and symbolism of Saiva temples, which are 
by no means entirely confined to Dravida — ^the south of India 
— are good evidence that the new Saiva sect grew out of or 
was in close sympathy with the Hinayana school of Buddhism. 
As in all Indian temples, Buddhist, Jain, and Brahmanical, 
the yogi's cell as a symbol of the divine Logos formed the 
holy of holies, the shrine of the sacred image. In the north 
of India, where Vaishnavism and Mahayana Buddhism held 
2l6 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

the field, this is generally (in the temples which escaped the 
iconoclastic fury of Islam) surmounted by Vishnu's symbol, 
the royal sikhara. But in the South, which became the strong- 
hold of Hinayana Buddhism after the break-up of the Mauryan 
Empire, the common symbol of Buddhist monasticism and 
Brahman ascetism, the domed stupa, covered the sacred shrine 
instead of the sikhara. Fergusson's so-called ' Dravidian ' 
temple is built up of a multiplication of these Saiva symbols, 
while his ' Indo- Aryan ' temple is similarly constructed on the 
basis of the Vishnu sikhara. But both Saiva and Vaishnava 
symbols belong to Indo-Aryan religion and not to non-Aryan 
or Dravidian superstitions. How the original symbol of 
creation adopted by the Saivas, the four-head Brahma image 
evolved from the stupa, became vulgarised into Siva's phallic 
emblem, the lingam, is a technical point which has been 
discussed elsewhere.^ 

The tedious narrative of dynastic wars, both in the north 
and south of India, which fills up the interval between the 
death of Harsha and the great Muhammadan invasions throws 
little light upon the greater problems of Indian history, beyond 
the fact that these constant internal dissensions contributed 
largely to the success of the Muhammadan armies when, their 
progress westward having been stayed, the eyes of their war- 
lords turned again towards India. The beautiful Saiva temples, 
probably of the seventh century, which remain near Badami, 
the ancient capital of the Chalukyan kingdom, show that the 
new Saiva movement had made progress in Southern India 
long before Sankaracharya came forward as the exponent of 
its philosophy. The famous sculptures of Mamallapuram, 
executed by the royal craftsmen of the Pallava dynasty about 
the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth century, 
indicate that some of the kings of that line were patrons of 
the Saiva cult, the Vaishnava names now given to these 
sculptures by local tradition having been bestowed upon them 
in later times, probably by the followers of Ramanuja. 

The new Saiva propaganda in the beginning was of the nature 
^ See Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India, by the author, pp. 106-108. 

217 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

of a general religious revival rather than a sectarian movement. 
The Brahmans of the South, penetrated by the spirituality of 
the Buddha's ethical doctrines, wished to set up a higher ideal 
of spiritual life than those of contemporary Buddhism and 
Jainism. The Saiva propagandists of the South were the 
Brahman reformers of Hinayana Buddhism, as the Vaishnava 
propagandists of the North had been in earlier times the 
Brahman reformers of Mahayana Buddhism, The earhest of 
these Saiva revivalists, Manikka-vacagar, a minister of one 
of the Pandyan kings of Madura about the sixth century, 
preached renunciation as the cure for the ills of the flesh no 
less earnestly than Sakya Muni himself, and the burden of the 
hymns in praise of Siva attributed to him is always the same 
bhakti — perfect faith and devotion — which is the dominant 
note of the Mahayana doctrine. It was only through his 
philosophical contests with the Hinayana pandits of the South 
that he became known as ' the Hammer of the Buddhists ' — 
the vital point at issue between them being the authority and 
spiritual significance of the Vedas. The successors of Manikka- 
vacagar in the seventh and eighth centuries were saints and 
poets rather than philosophers, their names being remembered 
by the miracles they are said to have performed and by 
devotional lyrics, like those of the early Buddhist bhikkus and 
bhikkanis, rather than by learned theses. The resemblance 
between the new movement and the early Buddhist propaganda 
is accentuated by the fact that though the Brahmans were 
the leaders of it and its chief philosophical exponents it was 
by no means Brahmanical in a caste sense, for the majority 
of its teachers were non-Brahmans. To this popular element 
in it must be attributed — as in other phases of Indian religion — 
the striking contrast between the lofty idealism of its esoteric 
teaching and the naivete of its popular symbolism. 

About the middle of the eighth century Vikramaditya II, 
the last but one of Pulakesin's line, made his name more 
illustrious by the Virupaksha temple of Pattadakal — a noble 
Saiva shrine built under his patronage — ^than by his successful 
wars with the Pandya, Chola, and Kerala kings. Krishna- 
218 



I 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

Raja I of the Raslitrakuta dynasty, which supplanted the 
Badami kings as Ivords Paramount of the Dekhan about 754, 
was one of the Brahman patrons of the Saiva movement. His 
reign was memorable for the commencement of the Kailasa 
temple at Ellora, a rock-cut marvel representing Siva's Hima- 
layan paradise which reproduced with more elaboration and 
on a grander scale the design of the Pattadakal temple.^ 

When, therefore, Sankaracharya, a young Brahman sann- 
yasin of the Nambudri class, born according to one account 
in a village of the Malabar district, and according to another 
at Chidambaram, came forward about the beginning of the 
ninth century to challenge the pandits of Buddhism in the 
philosophical arena, he did not come to propound any original 
doctrines, or to found a new religious sect, but to maintain 
against all comers the original position of Brahman orthodoxy 
as laid down in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. He 
was the delegate of the Brahman asrams of the South, sent 
to confute the doctrines of the Mahayana school which had 
been championed by Hiuen-Tsang on behalf of the learned 
Nalanda professors a century and a half before. Sankara- 
charya left no personal memoirs and found no biographer to 
record the details of his mission with the exactitude of a China- 
man, but, shorn of its miraculous incidents, the legendary 
account of the young sannyasin's victorious progress and of 
his reception at the royal courts reads like a chapter from the 
life of the Chinese pilgrim. After studying under a famous 
Brahman guru of Southern India, Govinda by name, and 
taking the vow of a sannyasin, he first went to Benares, the 
university of Brahman orthodoxy, where probably his two 
most important works, the commentaries on the Upanishads 
and the Bhagavad Gita, were written. Having won great 
distinction in the debating hall, and received the customary 
highest award of the university, he set out in state, as Hiuen- 
Tsang had done before him, escorted by a great retinue of 
disciples, to champion orthodox Brahman philosophy on his 
university's behalf in all the public debating halls of India. 

^ For details see Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India, by the author. 

219 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

His reception at the royal courts he visited was not less magnifi- 
cent and deferential than that which Harsha had accorded to 
Hiuen-Tsang. Nor was his triumph in the public assemblies 
less complete than that which the learned Master of the I^aw 
had won in the royal pavilion at Kanauj. The pandits of 
Buddhism were no match for his great dialectical powers, and 
Sankaracharya inflicted a final blow upon the prestige of both 
the Hinayana and Mahayana schools by organising, with the 
help of many of his royal patrons, an order of sannyasins open 
to all castes after the model of the Buddhist Sangha for the 
purpose of popularising Saiva teaching among the masses. 
The chief guru of the Sringeri Math, the most famous of the 
monasteries of Southern India founded by Sankaracharya, is 
still regarded as the spiritual head of the Saiva cult. 

Sankaracharya's mission was so successful in Southern India 
that Buddhism, in its sectarian aspect, after the eighth century 
disappeared from the mainland and only maintained itself in 
Ceylon. The Vaishnavism of the Bhagavad Gita, to which 
Sankaracharya was in no way opposed, in a similar way sup- 
planted, or rather absorbed, the Buddhism of the Mahayana 
schools in the North, which, however, continued to flourish in 
the Far Bast, both in China and Japan. The wholesale destruc- 
tion of monasteries and temples by the Muhammadan invaders 
finally put an end to the organisation of the Buddhist Sangha 
officially set on foot by Asoka. The ethics of Buddhism had 
long before become the common property of all Hindus, and 
Sankaracharya adopted its social principles by ignoring caste 
distinctions in the monastic order he founded ; so that it was 
more in a material than a spiritual sense that Buddhism became 
extinct in India. When Sankaracharya had accomplished his 
mission he retired to a Himalayan hermitage, and according 
to tradition died at Kedarnath, one of the most venerated of 
the Saiva tirths, in 828, at the early age of thirty-eight.^ 

It is a matter of the highest historical importance to deter- 
mine how much the ancient organisation of the village com- 
munities and the Aryan political constitution of India were 

^ See Sri Sankaracharya, his Life and Times, by C. N. Krishnasami Aiyar. 
220 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

affected by frequent dynastic changes, and by the constant 
internal wars recorded from the death of Harsha until the 
Muhammadan conquest of Northern India. The increasing 
volume of epigraphical evidence collected by the Archaeo- 
logical Survey of India tends to prove that, as in the time of 
Megasthenes, the Kshatriya traditions of chivalrous warfare 
protected the peaceful pursuits of the village communities 
throughout the troublous times of the Middle Ages, and that 
neither the quarrels of petty chieftains nor the rivalries of 
powerful dynasties affected seriously the solid organisation of 
village life which was the bed-rock of Hindu polity. A very 
interesting Pandyan inscription of the ninth century records an 
agreement entered into by local chieftains with the headman 
of a village, or group of villages, by which the former solemnly 
promised, when they and their retainers were fighting, to avoid 
inflicting any injury upon villages or their property, and under- 
took to pay compensation of loo panams for any cultivator 
who was injured, and 500 panams for any village that was 
destroyed.^ There are also many medieval inscriptions which 
testify to the complete control exercised by village assembhes 
in local affairs, and the great respect paid to them by the 
supreme head of the State. 

There is, moreover, a very important document, the Nitisdra 
of Sukracharya, which gives similar evidence with regard to 
Hindu political economy in the Middle Ages as the KautiUya- 
artha-Sdstra does for the Mauryan period and the Code of Manu 
for the early centuries of the Christian era. All three of these 
works embody a common tradition which is of very much 
earlier date than their respective texts, but each of them reflects 
some special characteristics of contemporary conditions, and 
therefore may be taken as good historical evidence for the 
period to which the extant texts are usually assigned. Sukra- 
charya describes his own treatise as an abridgment of earlier 
works by the Vedic rishi Vasishtha and others, and refers 
to Manu as an authority on the subject. The references 

* See Report of the Assistant Archaeological Sttperintendent on the Progress 
of Epigraphy in Southern India, 19 14-15. 

221 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

to cannons and gunpowder give some indication of the period 
in which the author or compiler Uved. 

The Sukrd-niti is more expHcit than the Code of Manu on 
the subject of caste. In ancient times, says Sukracharya, 
the castes were divided into four classes by Brahma according 
to their occupations (iv, 3-21). " The man who is good by 
birth becomes low by low associations, but the man who is 
low by birth cannot become high by high associations " (iv, 
27-28). Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Sudras, and Mlech- 
chhas are separated, he declares, not by birth but by virtues 
and by works. " Neither through colour nor through ancestors 
can the spirit worthy of a Brahmana be generated." The 
Brahman is he who practises the duties of Brahmanhood ; the 
Kshatriya he who is strong and valiant and self-restrained in 
his duty of protecting the State ; the Vaisya he who lives 
by commerce, tends cattle, and cultivates lands; the Sudra 
he who serves the twice-born, is bold yet peaceful and self- 
controlled, drives the plough, and carries wood and fodder 
for cattle ; Mlechchhas are those who neglect their duties, are 
cruel and oppressive to others, excitable, envious, and foolish. 
In making official appointments work, character, and merit 
were to be regarded — neither caste nor family (ii, 111-112). 
Only in marriages and in eating together the observation of 
caste rules was compulsory. The reward of labour was also 
to be regulated according to caste distinctions. " The wealth 
that is stolen by the Brahman tends to well-being in the next 
life ; the wealth that is given to the Sudra tends only to hell," 
is one of Sukracharya's pungent aphorisms (ii, 811-812). 

With regard to the organisation of town and village life the 
Sukrd-niti agrees with the Kautiliya-artha-Sdstra. The detailed 
planning of towns and villages is described. Wide roads (rdja- 
margas) were to be constructed to connect town and village. 
Bridges and ferries were to be provided for crossing rivers. 
The roads were to be made with a convex surface, like the 
back of a tortoise ; they should have drains on both sides, 
and be repaired every year with stones or gravel by convict 
labour at the cost of the royal treasury. A travellers' rest- 
222 



I 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

house was to be provided between every two villages ; it was 
to be kept clean and in good order by the official in charge of 
it, who was also to scrutinise all travellers, record their names 
and permanent residence, take possession of their arms at 
night, and have the rest-house carefully guarded. 

The king's troops were not to be quartered upon villagers, 
and his officers and servants were not to live in the villages 
nor meddle in their affairs. No soldier was to enter a village 
except with a royal permit, nor was he in any case to oppress 
villagers. In order to avoid any dispute with the military, 
villagers were advised to avoid dealings with soldiers. The 
king himself should personally inspect the villages every year, 
as well as the chief towns and districts, to ascertain whether 
his subjects were contented and not suffering from oppressive 
officials. " He should take the side not of his officers, but of 
his subjects " (i, 754). An officer accused by one hundred 
persons was to be dismissed. The village headman, as the 
king's deputy, should be Hke a father and mother to the 
people and protect them " from bandits, thieves, and officials " 
(ii» 343-344)- " '^or who," says Sukracharya, " does not 
get intoxicated by drinking the vanity of office ? " (ii, 
227). ^ 

While the rights of the village communities were thus 
jealously safeguarded, the principle of self-government also 
extended to craft-guilds, banking and mercantile corporations, 
and reHgious organisations. The king's courts did not interfere 
in their domestic affairs : all disputes between members were 
settled according to custom and the traditions of each of these 
bodies, because such disputes involved technical questions 
upon which the king's officers could not properly adjudicate. 
The organisations of dancers and thieves came under this 
category. 

In levying taxes upon the peasant cultivator the amount 
of his profits should be taken into consideration. Successful 
agriculture ought to yield a profit of double the expenditure, 
including the State taxes (IV, ii, 224-226). The king should 
levy taxes upon the peasant as a garland-maker gathers leaves 

223 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and flowers from the trees in the forest, not like a charcoal- 
burner. 

The extent of the liberty of the subject is carefully defined. 
The jurisdiction of the king's officers extended to the regulation 
of gambling, drinking, hunting ; the use of arms ; the sale 
and purchase of cattle, elephants, and other live-stock ; im- 
movable property ; precious metals and jewellery ; intoxi- 
cants and poisons ; the manufacture of wines and spirits ; 
the preparation of deeds relating to sales, gifts, and loans ; and 
to medical practice. Liquor houses were not allowed inside 
villages, and no drinking of liquor was to be permitted any- 
where in the daytime. In defining the limitations of monarchy 
the Hindu lawgiver is much more explicit and outspoken than 
the barons of England at Runnymede when they dictated 
Magna Carta. The king must never act upon his own opinions 
(ii, 5-6), but upon the opinions of the majority (i, 232-233). 
" Public opinion is more powerful than the king, as the rope 
made up of many fibres is strong enough to drag a lion " 
(iv, 7, 838-839). The king's word alone was not valid authority 
— " The king who commands without writing and the officer 
who acts without written orders are both thieves." The 
written order under the king's seal represented the real king. 
" The king is not a king " (ii, 582-587). And it must be 
remembered that Sukracharya's authority is not that of an 
obscure pamphleteer airing his personal opinions, or of a village 
Hampden risking his neck in defence of popular rights. Who- 
ever the reputed author might have been he certainly was 
regarded as an exponent of an ancient popular tradition which 
every king was bound to respect, for these Nitisdras were the 
text-books for the king's education. There are always kings 
who forget their lessons or learn them badly ; but the theor}^ 
that India has never enjoyed a constitution according to 
modern ideas is an historical fiction which does not bear careful 
examination. 

Sukracharya's instructions for the planning of the king's 
capital contain many interesting particulars. The site should 
be chosen in a place that was well wooded, fertile, with good 
224 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

supplies of water and food, and not too far from the hills. It 
must have good roads, wells and reservoirs, public parks or 
orchards, and well-constructed taverns, temples, and serais for 
travellers. The royal fortress palace was a square block built 
in the centre of the city, with the Council buildings surround- 
ing it. Accommodation was to be provided for the royal 
stables, storehouses, armoury and gymnasium, piiblic and 
private entertainments, the king's study and sleeping apart- 
ments, the court house, royal workshops, servants' quarters, 
etc. 

The Council House, consisting of three, five, or seven apart- 
ments, was to be a beautiful building accessible by all routes, 
painted and furnished with fountains and ventilating apparatus, 
clocks, mirrors, and musical instruments. The ministers and 
their staffs were to be provided with separate quarters adjoin- 
ing it. Military cantonments were to be laid out on the north 
and east of the palace, and the dwelling-houses of the city 
were to be grouped round the latter in order of precedence 
as indicated in the plans of the Silpa-Sastras previously 
described. 

The functions of the Council of State and its constitution 
were practically the same as in the Mauryan period. The king 
was not always present at the deliberations of the Council, 
but when the resolutions of the Council had been put into 
writing they were signed first by the Foreign Minister, the 
Chief Justice, and the Pandit, next by the Amdtya or Home 
Member, then by the Sumantra or Finance Member, and after- 
wards successively by the President {Pradhdna), the lyCgal 
Member {Pratinidhi, he who knows what can be done and what 
cannot be done), the Crown Prince, the Purohiia or Royal 
Chaplain, and finally by the king. 

Among the executive officers were the Director-General of 
Parks and Forests, who was to be an expert in horticulture 
and arboriculture and to be acquainted with the medicinal 
properties of products of the vegetable kingdom. The Chief 
Ofiicer of Public Works was to be a master-builder, learned 
in the Silpa-Sastras, who could construct palaces and their 

p 225 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

defensive works, wells, reservoirs, and irrigation machinery — 
" all very finely according to the rules of the Sastras." 

In the administration of justice strict regard was to be paid 
not only to the privileges of castes, villages, corporations, and 
families, but to local customs. For example, Sukracharya 
states that in Madhyadesa beef -eating and polyandry were 
practised, and in the South Brahmans married their maternal 
uncles' daughters ; but punishment was not to be inflicted 
in such cases because the custom of the country permitted 
these breaches of Aryan law. The ethical code of the Sukrd- 
nitisdra is tinged with opportunism and does not always main- 
tain the high ideals of Buddhism. Sukracharya advises that 
the rules of chivalrous warfare should be observed as long as 
one is powerful, but when the enemy is strong there is no 
method so effective as the kutayudha, or warfare in which 
morality is disregarded. He counsels moderation in virtue as 
in vice. " Vices become virtues by change of circumstances. 
Virtue is that which is approved of by the majority : vice is 
that which is condemned by all. The theory of morals is 
very intricate and is not easily understood " (v, 70-72). Hunt- 
ing was to be considered a vice by the ordinary man, but for 
the king it was permissible to hunt and kill wild beasts in 
order to develop his courage, activity, and military skill. 
When any members of the royal family were found to be of 
very evil disposition the king should not hesitate to get rid 
of them " by tigers, or by craft," lest the safety of the State 
and of the people should be imperilled. Indian history shows 
that when the king as well as his relations showed a " very 
evil disposition " similar drastic measures were not infrequently 
resorted to by the Council of State for putting an end to a 
royal dynasty. 

When allowances are made for differences in matters of 
detail due to the maintenance of local customs, which Aryan 
polity always carefully respected, the principles of government 
laid down by these Indo-Aryan codes of law may be said to 
have equal application to the history of the Dekhan and 
Southern India as they have to that of the North. Aryan 
226 



Z'W^^ 



L,... 











17. Bronze Statuette of Apparswami 



226 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

religion made all India one body in politics, for disputes on 
matters of doctrine or politics never caused a conflict between 
Church and State in India, and the principles of Aryan religion 
were always acknowledged to be the highest political laws. 
" All forms of sacraments are combined in politics ; all the 
heavens are centred in the ethics of the State." ^ 

The Dravidian races of the south of India clung with the 
tenacity of a convert to Aryan ideals of religion and polity, 
although they clothed them with their own vernacular forms 
of expression, and retained many of their own social habits 
and customs. When the Aryan tradition in the north of 
India began to lose some of its pristine spirituality, after the 
many incursions of foreign racial elements, it was the Brahmans 
of Southern India who restored the prestige of Vedic teaching 
and waged war against many immoral and corrupt practices 
of the Buddhist Sangha. And in the subsequent period, when 
the Muhammadan invaders in the North were hacking up the 
roots of Indo-Aryan culture and political organisation with 
the svv^ord, the Aryan tradition continued to flourish under the 
patronage of the kings of the South. In the temple records 
of Southern India one still finds the most detailed statements 
of the Indo-Aryan system of local self-government as it is 
outhned in the codes of Kautiliya and Sukracharya. 

From these records it is clear that Megasthenes was not 
exaggerating when he stated that the popular Assemblies of 
the South held the power of kings in check, though the ' Five 
Great Assemblies ' to which he referred were different from 
those of the local Assemblies administering village affairs. 
The former constituted an imperial Parliament, the members 
of it taking precedence after the king's ministers. The five 
classes represented were, first, the village communities ; 
secondly, the priests ; thirdly, the physicians ; fourthly, 
astrologers ; and, fifthly, the king's executive officers. The 
representatives of the first class safeguarded the rights and 
privileges of the people ; those of the second class controlled 
public rehgious ceremonies and the administration of temples ; 

^ Mahabharata, Santi Parva, I^XIII, 29. 

227 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the physicians directed State sanitation ; the astrologers fixed 
the auspicious times for pubHc ceremonies and foretold coming 
events ; the king's officers supervised the collection and 
expenditure of the revenue and the administration of justice.^ 

So far as archaeological research has gone the period which 
yields the most interesting records relating to the constitution 
and powers of the village Assemblies is from the time of San- 
karacharya down to a.d. iigo, though there is no reason to 
doubt that such institutions existed in much earlier times and 
were part and parcel of the Aryanisation of the South. These 
inscriptions, mostly inscribed on the walls of the temple manda- 
pams which formed the local council chambers and town 
halls, show that the same system of village unions under the 
control of a king's officer which existed in the days of Chandra- 
gupta Maurya was maintained in Southern India in medieval 
times. 

But the point which the Kautillya-artha-Sdstra does not 
bring out is the great extent of the powers exercised by the 
local Assemblies — the Sabhas and Maha-sabhas — and the 
extreme respect paid to the ' great men ' of the village by the 
officers of the king. Even when the king's intervention in the 
affairs of the village union is invoked, the edict of the Assembl)^ 
which settles a dispute is not issued in the king's name, but 
in that of the ' great men,' to whom the royal envoy himself 
respectfully applies the honorific form of address, " their 
Majesties " [Tiruvadiyar). 

These village Parliaments though responsible to the supreme 
Government for the payment of the taxes due from village 
lands had complete control over the collection of them, and 
the lands not reserved as royal domains or dedicated to religious 
purposes belonged ultimately to the Assembly, not to the 
State. The distribution of village lands among the cultivators 
was in their hands, both when fresh clearings were made and 
when holdings were taken over by the Assembly in default 
of payment of taxes. In disputed matters the king's authority, 
as arbitrator, was sometimes invoked, when the king in person, 

1 V. Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago, p. 143. 
228 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

or a royal envoy sent as his representative, would intervene. 
Thus in one inscription of the tenth century we get an intimate 
glimpse of the great Chola king, Sri Rajarajadeva, seated in 
the college hall on the south of the painted chamber next to 
the great Hippodrome Gate at Tanjore, adjudicating in a case 
in which certain landholders had not paid the taxes for three 
years. The judgment, drafted by the king's private secretary 
and approved by one of the ministers, the Chief Secretary, was 
to the effect that the lands might be sold by the village com- 
munities to the exclusion of the defaulting occupiers. But it 
is clear from the rule that the king's officers must live outside 
the village ^ that the royal officials did not ordinarily interfere 
with the administration of local affairs except when their 
counsel was thus invited, though occasionally they called for 
the village accounts and adjusted matters relating to temple 
endowments when complaints were made by the temple 
authorities. If a Sabha, or Assembly, of a single village or 
of the smallest group of villages neglected its duties towards 
its constituency, the Maha-sabha, or the Great Assembly, of 
the next largest group could interfere and punish the offending 
members by fines. The king, also, could fine or otherwise 
punish the Sabha for maladministration. 

The Assemblies conducted their business by means of a 
number of committees in the same way as the affairs of Patali- 
putra were conducted in the fourth century B.C. References 
are frequently made to a Water Committee, which attended to 
public wells, reservoirs, and irrigation works ; a Garden or 
Park Committee, which looked after the public gardens where 
flowers were cultivated to be used as offerings to the gods and 
for garlands at public ceremonies, and also the public orchards 
which provided fruit for Brahmans in the temple service, for 
pilgrims, and for travellers. Another committee was concerned 
with the administration of those temples whose endowments 
and charities were not under the entire control of the Brahman 
custodians. The Assembly often provided endowments for 
temples or other religious institutions, free of all taxes, by 

^ Sukracharya, v, 179. 

229 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

selling village lands and, after making provision for payment 
of royal dues, devoting the proceeds to such purposes. Some- 
times the Assembly not only transferred the whole revenues 
of villages, including the labour contributed by artisans in 
lieu of taxes, and similar contributions for public purposes, as 
a pious gift to a temple, but ordered that the temple authorities 
should take over judicial jurisdiction themselves and punish 
any offences committed against the law by the villages. They 
also received gifts of land or money for the purpose of construct- 
ing and maintaining works of public utility, such as wells and 
bathing tanks, or charitable institutions. 

There were also committees charged with the administration 
of general affairs, finance, and justice. In judicial matters 
also these historical records supplement the statements of 
Kautiliya and Sukracharj^a, for they show that the popular 
Assemblies had similar powers to those of the royal courts of 
justice in cases which came under their jurisdiction. The 
Assembly not only imposed fines for breaches of communal 
laws, but even had jurisdiction in cases in which the penalty 
might be death. For the trial of such cases the Assembly was 
sometimes convened by the Governor of the district, but it 
also acted independently. 

Among the most important of the inscriptions yet deciphered 
are two found on the walls of a temple in the Madura district 
laying down the rules for the election of members of the local 
Assembly. The circumstances recorded in the inscriptions 
show that an appeal had been made to the king by some of 
the inhabitants of the Brahman village union, Uttarameru- 
Catur-Vedimangalam, which consisted of twelve villages divided 
into thirty wards. The ground of complaint was the mal- 
administration of the affairs of the union. The communal 
laws had been broken ; the officials of the Assembly had 
embezzled public funds and had not rendered their accounts. 
The Chola king, Parantaka I, who held court at Madura 
thereupon (a.d. 918) sent an official to confer with the local 
Assembly. The first inscription records an arrangement made 
" so that the wicked men of our village may perish and the 
230 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

rest prosper." The royal envoy, Tattanur-Muvendavelana, 
having been a Sudra, it is not surprising that the Brahmans 
of the village union remained dissatisfied. The following 
year the King sent a Brahman of the court to act as 
arbitrator. The final settlement passed by "the great men 
sitting in the Assembly " and written out by the royal 
arbitrator at their command is recorded in the second in- 
scription. 

The purport of the settlement is the framing of rules for the 
election of the six committees of the Assembly and for the 
appointment of the local accountant. The committees were 
those for Annual Supervision ; the Garden or Park Com- 
mittee ; the Tank or Water Committee ; a Committee for the 
Supervision of Gold ; a Committee of General Affairs {Pancha- 
vdra), and a Committee of Justice. The qualification for 
members related to property, age, and education. As regards 
property, the member nominated must own a quarter veli ^ 
of tax-paying land, and also occupy and own a house together 
with the land upon which it was built. The age limit was 
fixed at above thirty-five and below seventy. This regulation 
doubtless took into account the fact that the constituency was 
a Brahman one, for a Brahman who followed the dharma of 
his caste strictly would not have completed the period of 
studentship much before thirty-five, and before seventy years 
of age he should have ceased to be a householder and have 
devoted himself to spiritual concerns. 

The educational qualifications took into consideration the 
ancient Aryan tradition that an unlearned Brahman had no 
civil rights. The minimum standard fixed was knowledge of 
the Mantra Brahmdna and capacity to teach it. In the case 
of a Brahman who knew one Veda and one of the four Bhashyas 
the value of the property qualification was reduced : he was 
eligible if he possessed only one-eighth veli of tax-paying land. 
These particular inscriptions give no indications whether women 
were eligible, but that this was the case at least in some village 
communities is evident from the mention in another South 

^ About I J acres. 

231 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Indian inscription of a woman serving on the Committee of 
Justice. 

Among those quahfied as above only those who were virtuous 
and well conversant with business, who had acquired their 
wealth by honest means, whose minds were pure, and who had 
not served on any of the committees for the last three years 
were to be nominated. The list of disqualifications included 
those who had formerly served on the committees but had not 
rendered their accounts. A safeguard against nepotism was pro- 
vided by a rule excluding from office the near relatives of any 
member as specified in a long list of them. Next follows a list of 
crimes and misdemeanours which would make any member of 
the community ineligible — such as killing a Brahman, drinking 
intoxicating liquors, and adultery with the wife of a guru. 

The names of the nominees for each of the thirty wards 
were to be inscribed on voting tickets by the electors, and 
the tickets for each ward were tied together in packets with 
the total number of votes marked outside. On the day of 
election, fixed by the ' Gold Committee ' for the current 
year, a general meeting of the Assembly was held in the 
mandapam of the temple at which apparently all the ' pure 
classes,' young and old, could be present. All the temple 
priests were expected to attend in the antardla, the ante- 
chamber in front of the shrine. The proceedings commenced 
by one of the senior priests, acting as * arbitrator,' or returning 
officer, holding up in full view of the Assembly a jar containing 
the thirty packets of voting tickets. Then any young boy 
standing near — " one who was ignorant of the matter " — 
took at random one of the packets, and the tickets having 
been untied were placed in another jar and shaken together. 
From this jar the boy took one of the tickets and handed it 
over to the arbitrator, who received it "in the palm of his 
hand with the five fingers open " and read out the name 
written upon it. The ticket was then passed round so as to 
be seen and read by all the assembled priests. The person 
thus chosen was declared duly elected. One nominee for each 
ward was similarly chosen. 
232 




i8. Interior of a Modern Tempi^e Mandapam 232 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

The edict of the Assembly goes on to declare that from the 
members thus duly elected twelve of the oldest and most 
learned, or those who had previously served on the Garden 
or Water Committees, were to constitute the Committee of 
Annual Supervision. Twelve of the rest should be taken for 
the Garden Committee, and the remaining six for the Water 
Committee. The term of office for each committee was one 
year, but any member guilty of misconduct was to be removed 
at once. The Committee of Justice for the current year were 
to summon a meeting of electors to fill up vacancies which 
might occur. Separate nominations were to be made for the 
Panchavara Committee, whose functions were apparently 
those of general supervision,^ and for the ' Gold Committee.' 
Thirty nominees were to be chosen in the manner described, 
and from these were to be eliminated the candidates of wards 
which had been represented on the same committees in the 
previous year. From the remainder six members were then 
selected for the first committee, and the same number for the 
second by an oral vote. 

No regulations are made for the constitution of the Com- 
mittee of Justice, nor is the method of its election described, 
so we must conclude that the ordinary rules, whatever they 
may have been, were followed in this case. It is reasonable 
to assume that in general principle the rules prescribed in the 
edict of the Assembly accorded with the ancient tradition of 
popular self-government of which the Brahmans of Uttara- 
mallur were the custodians, only they were made more strict 
to meet the special circumstances of the case and to prevent 
a recurrence of the irregularities which had made the interven- 
tion of the King necessary. 

The edict concludes with regulations for the office of village 
accountant — an important person in the political economy of 
the community. " Arbitrators, and those who have earned 
their wealth by honest means, shall write the accounts of the 
village." No accountant was to be reappointed to that office 
until he had himself prepared his accounts and submitted them 
^ Or perhaps revenue collection. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

for audit to the ' Great Committee,' which must certify to 
his honesty. 

The method of organisation and the official administration 
of the districts and provinces of the Chola kingdom were like- 
wise according to Indo-Aryan principles of political economy. 
The village community was the unit ; a certain number of 
units combined to form a district {nddu) ; a federation of 
nadus formed a division {kottam) ; and a federation of kottams 
formed a province {mandalam) .'^ Each of these different 
groups was in charge of a royal official, who with his assistants 
acted as the intermediary between the local Assemblies and 
the supreme Government, and exercised those functions which 
came within imperial jurisdiction. The Governor of a province 
was generally a prince of the royal house, as was the case in 
the administration of the Mauryan and succeeding empires 
of Northern India. 

The principal source of Government revenue was the land- 
tax, the normal rate of which according to immemorial tradi- 
tion was one-sixth of the gross produce. For the assessment 
of this tax a very careful survey of cultivated land was made, 
of which a register was kept, so that every cultivator knew 
the exact amount for which he was liable. ^ It was only in 
defiance of public opinion and of traditional laws that the 
king would venture to demand more from the cultivators 
directly. But in times of great emergency and with the 
consent of the popular Assemblies the rate could be raised. 
The king, moreover, with the consent of his Council, which 
was presumed to represent the people's interests, had the 
power of increasing his revenue by levying various imposts and 
tolls upon merchandise, especially luxuries, and a great number 
of these are detailed in the inscriptions. That the cumulative 
effect of these was sometimes oppressive may be gathered 
from the fact that one Chola king earned the popular title of 
Sunganda-virta-Chola — ' the Chola who abolished tolls.' 3 

^ Ancient India, by S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, pp. 173-174. 
2 A summary of Rajaraja's inscriptions relating to land surveys is given 
by Professor Krishnaswami Aiyangar in his Ancient India, pp. 175-176. 
' Ibid., p. 182. 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

No form of government, Eastern or Western, democratic, 
autocratic, or bureaucratic, has yet been devised which cannot 
be and is not made an instrument of oppression, but the 
common belief of Europe that Indian monarchy was always 
an irresponsible and arbitrary despotism is, so far as concerns 
the pre-Muhammadan period, only one of the many false 
conceptions of Indian history held by Europeans. Neither 
ancient nor modern history in Europe can show a system of 
local self-government more scientifically planned, nor one 
which provided more effective safeguards against abuses, than 
that which was worked out by Aryan philosophers as the social 
and political basis of Indo-Aryan religion. The liberty of the 
Englishman was wrung from unwilling rulers by bitter struggles 
and by civil war. India's Aryan constitution was a free gift of 
the intellectuals to the people ; it was designed, not in the interest 
of one class, but to secure for all classes as full a measure of liberty 
and of spiritual and material possessions as their respective 
capacities and consideration for the common weal permitted. 

Much has been written of Brahmanical tyranny. Authority 
makes tyrants of all men. But intellectual tyranny is certainly 
the mildest form of that disease and the least injurious to 
humanity. The Brahmans were profound students of human 
nature, and they recognised intuitively a psychical fact which 
Europe is learning empirically by a slow and painful process, 
that all men are not born equal, and that terrible disasters to 
civilisation may occur by giving free access to the well of 
knowledge for all men, whether they are spiritually fit for it 
or not. If the restrictions imposed by Brahmans seem too 
severe to Western minds, they may be taken as a proof of the 
deep religious spirit in which the Indian people entered into 
the acquisition of knowledge ; and certainly no people ever 
honoured learning more or were more ardent in the pursuit 
of it. Nor was the Brahman dispensation less liberal in bestow- 
ing its intellectual treasures upon the people than the spiritual 
hierarchy of Europe : the ' illiterate ' masses of India might 
even now give lessons in culture to the scientific barbarians of 
modern Europe. 

235 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

The dynastic history of Southern India, so far as it is known, 
does not give much insight into the personal character or 
achievements of the Chola kings, nor do the frequent wars in 
which they were engaged with their rivals, the Pandyas, 
Pallavas, Cheras or Keralas, and Chalukyas, have the political 
interest which belongs to those of the great imperial rulers of 
the North. The Cholas were of an ancient lineage, as it is 
mentioned in the Mahabharata, and their kingdom was 
renowned in the early centuries of the Christian era for its 
maritime trade, centred in a great port called Kaviripaddinam, 
at the mouth of the Kaviri river, where there were settlements 
of Yavana merchants (Asiatic Greeks) and many other foreign 
traders,^ for the markets of Kaviripaddinam, besides local 
products and manufactures such as fine cotton goods, received 
great quantities of merchandise from the Ganges valley, from 
Burma, Ceylon, and from the ports of the Red Sea. In the 
warlike expeditions of the South Indian kings their navies 
often played a considerable part, and no doubt the legend of 
Ravana's ' magic car ' on which he transported the captive 
Sita to Ceylon is the poetical version of some piratical raid up 
the Godavari river in which the fair Aryan princess was seized 
as a rich prize and carried off to Lanka, the pirate king's 
stronghold. It is easy to understand that such an outrage 
created as much uproar in the Aryan court of Ajodhya as the 
abduction of Helen did in the palace of Menelaus. 

The wars with Ceylon occupy a prominent place in Tamil 
history. The first definite record of a Chola king's exploits 
by the court poets of Southern India refers to a successful 
naval expedition from Kaviripaddinam against Ceylon, in which 
Karikala obtained 3000 craftsmen to assist in a great work he 
was undertaking — ^the embankment of the Kaviri. By this 
means, it is said, he was enabled to continue it for a hundred 
miles. Probably the need of craftsmen for executing great 
public works of this kind was often one of the motives for 
plundering expeditions. Indo-Aryan masons were noted for 
their skill, and even Mahmtid of Ghazni and Timiir in their 

^ See History of Indian Shipping, by Radhakumud Mookerji, p. 136. 
236 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

insatiate thirst for blood observed the rule that the lives of 
craftsmen should be spared in battle so that they might 
contribute by their labour to the glory of the victors. Indian 
craftsmen, especially the master-builders learned in the Silpa- 
Sastras, have thus played a very important part in the diffusion 
of Aryan culture. 

Buddhism in Southern India, as in the North, favoured the 
growth of a vernacular literature, and it is to the early centuries 
of the Christian era, when Buddhism and Jainism were flourish- 
ing in the South, that scholars generally assign the classical 
works of Tamil literature, of which the Rural of Tiruvalluvar 
is a typical masterpiece. At this period Madura, under the 
patronage of the Pandya kings, took the corresponding place 
to Taksha-sila or Pataliputra in the North. We have had 
acquaintance already with the practice in Northern India of 
referring philosophical theses to the General Assembly of 
pandits for judgment. A remarkable institution connected 
with the Pandyan capital was the Sangam, a body of critics 
and poets which constituted a court for judging the merit of 
poems or plays submitted to it.^ It apparently existed for a 
considerable period, as forty-nine Pandyan kings are said to 
have been its patrons. 

But though the royal courts were thus the centres of literary 
culture and great mercantile activity, and though the Dravidian 
capitals vied in splendour with those of Aryavarta, there is 
little evidence that civilisation had penetrated deeply among 
the people of Southern India, as it had done in the North, 
before the beginning of the great Saiva movement. Hiuen- 
Tsang has not much to say in praise of Dravidian civilisation 
until he comes to Kanchipura (Conjeveram), then the Pallava 
capital, where he says the people " were courageous, thoroughly 
trustworthy and public-spirited, and they esteemed great 
learning." In other parts of the southern districts he describes 
the inhabitants as " harsh and impetuous, of mixed religions, 
indifferent to culture and only good at trade." ^ His observa- 

^ Ancient India, by Krishnaswami Aiyangar, chap. xiv. 
2 Beal, On Yuan Chwang, vol. ii, pp. 226-228. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

tions carry the more weight because he frequently testifies to 
the love of learning he found among those who were not followers 
of the Law during his Northern pilgrimage. 

The architectural record of the South also goes to prove 
that Dravidian civilisation derived its main impulse from the 
gradual extension southward of Indo-Aryan culture, for the 
so-called ' Dravidian style ' of architecture is only Indo-Aryan 
design adapted to the symbolism of the Saiva cult and shows 
little direct inspiration of Dravidian ideas. The earhest 
Aryanisation of the South gathered strength under the disasters 
which overtook Aryan civilisation in the North, for they drove 
Indo-Aryan royal craftsmen to take refuge in the courts of 
the Southern kings and brought many other refugees to com- 
plete the Aryan colonisation of Dravida. The records of the 
admirable system of local self-government, based upon Indo- 
Aryan traditions, which have been mentioned above synchro- 
nise with the Chola hegemony of Southern India established 
about the middle of the ninth century by Vijayalaya, though 
no doubt a similar system, more or less developed, had existed 
in the kingdoms of the Pandya, Pallava, and other dynasties 
before that time. 

Vijayalaya, profiting by the exhaustion of the Pandya and 
Pallava powers resulting from their constant wars with the 
Chalukyas and with each other, made the city of Tanjore 
his capital and extended the Chola dominion down to Cape 
Comorin. His two immediate successors inflicted further 
defeats upon the Pallavas and pushed northward to the 
territories of the Rashtrakutas — ^the dynasty which in the 
middle of the eighth century had succeeded the Chalukyan 
kings as lords of the Dekhan — and Parantaka I, who reigned 
from 907 to 947, drove the Pandyas from their ancient capital, 
Madura. He was holding court there in 918 when the Brah- 
mans of Uttaramallur appealed for his intervention in the 
affairs of their commune. Parantaka, like his predecessors, was 
a patron of the Saiva cult, and signalised his victories by 
re-plating with gold the great hall, or Kanaka Sahhd, of the 
shrine of Chidambaram, one of the five great Saiva temples of 
238 






DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

Southern India dedicated to the five lingams, or five cosmic 
elements — earth, water, fire, air, and ether. ^ Chidambaram 
is consecrated to the last of the five, dkasa, the cosmic ether, 
which is appropriately symbolised in the Holy of Holies by an 
empty shrine shrouded in utter darkness. As is usual in 
Southern India, Siva is here imaged as Nataraja, the lyord of 
the Dance, a symbol of the rhythmic vibration of ether by 
which Ishvara sets the universe in motion and impels it to 
destruction according to his will. The beautiful Nritya Sahhd, 
the dancing hall of the temple, is devoted to the professional 
nautch, an institution intended to popularise the esoteric 
philosophy of Saivism, though it cannot be said to be inspired 
by its highest ideal of living. 

Parantaka's eldest son, Rajaditya, when he succeeded his 
father rashly ventured to measure his strength with the Rash- 
trakuta forces, but was killed at Takkolam in a hand-to-hand 
fight with Krishna III, brother-in-law of Butuga II, the raja 
of the territories comprised in the present Mysore state. This 
catastrophe was followed by Krishna's entry into Kanchi and 
the siege of Tanjore, and though the second of Parantaka's 
sons did something to avert further disaster it was thirty-six 
years before the military genius of Rajaraja I restored the 
fortunes of the Chola dynasty. 

This doughty warrior, who succeeded Parantaka II in 985, 
was a contemporary of Sabuktagin, the founder of the Ghaz- 
nevide dynasty, and of Mahmud : the contest for the supremacy 
of the Dekhan and Southern India was fought while Northern 
India was being ravaged by the Muhammadan raiders. Raja- 
raja's first success was a naval action off the Malabar coast 
in which the Chera fieet was destroyed. Then he forced to 
acknowledge his suzerainty the districts contained in the 
present Mysore state belonging to the Chalukyan raj. The 
Telugu and Uriya countries right up to the Mahanadi river, 

1 The other four temples are those at Kanchi (Conjeveram), which is dedi- 
cated to the earth-lingam ; the J ambvikeshvaram temple near Trichinopoly, 
where a perennial spring is worshipped as the water-lingam ; Tiruvannamalai,' 
in South Arkot, to the fire-lingam ; and Kalahasti, North Arkot, to the air- 
lingam. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

which formed the kingdom of Kalinga, were the next additions 
to the Chola Empire. A struggle of four years ended about 
1005 in the complete conquest of Ceylon, which remained subject 
to the Chola power for seventy years afterwards. Rajaraja's 
fleets seem to have swept the Arabian Sea and the Bay of 
Bengal, for the records of his triumphs claim dominion over 
" the twelve thousand ancient islands of the sea." He is also 
said to have emulated Mahmud's exploits by invading the 
northern part of the Chalukyan territories with a vast army 
which chastised the hereditary enemies of the Cholas by indis- 
criminate plunder and slaughter. His victories were com- 
memorated by the building of the great Saiva temple at 
Tanjore, one of the most splendid monuments of South Indian 
architecture. I/ike all other Dravidian temples it follows 
entirely Indo- Aryan building traditions. 

Rajaraja's son, Rajendra (1013-1044), added to his father's 
conquests both by sea and land. His greatest exploit was the 
conquest of the southern districts of Burma, forming the 
ancient kingdom of Prome, or Pegu. The inscriptions of the 
thirteenth year of his reign record that the Chola fleet convoy- 
ing his army, including war-elephants, across the Bay of 
Bengal met and scattered the enemy's fleet and then assisted 
in the capture of the capital Kadaram and the seaports of 
Takkolam and Matama, or Martaban — a much greater naval 
achievement than the transport of William of Normandy's 
troops across the English Channel, which took place about 
forty years afterwards. Rajendra's armies, besides overcoming 
the resistance of several Sinhalese kings and defeating their, 
ancient enemies, the Chalukyas — who were at this time repre- 
sented by a new dynasty known as the Chalukyas of Kalyan — 
penetrated to the Ganges valley, probably with the assistance 
of the fleet, and forced Mahipala, King of Gaur, one of the 
representatives of a dynasty which had ruled in Bengal since 
the middle of the eighth century, to acknowledge Chola supre- 
macy. The Chola Empire was thus one of the greatest known 
since the days of the Guptas, extending as it did over the 
greater part of Eastern India and the Dekhan, and the whole 
240 




o 



J 



DEKHAN AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

of Southern India, including Ceylon. Had the Cholas succeeded 
in establishing a complete hegemony over India south of the 
Vindhyas they might have created an effective barrier to the 
advance of the Musalman armies southward ; but the cruelty 
and disregard of the rights of non-combatants which seem to 
have characterised the Chola wars did not contribute to the 
internal strength of the empire, and the death of Rajendra I 
was followed bj^ a revolt of some of the tributary states. This 
gave Somesvara I, the Chalukyan king, an opportunity to 
push forward to the Tungabhadra river, and in the great 
battle of Koppam in a.d. 1053 Rajadhiraja, the then reigning 
Chola emperor, was slain. The day was saved by the valour 
of the Crown Prince, Rajendra, who turned defeat into victory 
and was crowned emperor on the battlefield, but the Tunga- 
bhadra remained the frontier between the two powers, and 
neither Rajendra III nor his successors attained the full height 
of Chola ambition by establishing a Tamil empire extending 
over all Dravida, or India south of the Vindhyas. 



241 



CHAPTER XV 

THE ARTISTIC RECORD OF SOUTHERN 

INDIA FROM THE SEVENTH TO 

THE ELEVENTH CENTURIES 

THE artistic record of Southern India from the seventh 
to the tenth or eleventh centuries, which cover the 
great Chola period, is fortunately more complete than 
that of the Guptas ; partly because the iconoclastic rage of 
Islam had satiated itself before the resistance of Hinduism in 
the South was broken down, and partly because Islam itself 
by that time had learnt to regard India as its adopted home- 
land. It had taken the ensign of Hindustan, the crescent 
moon, as its own, and had imbibed some of the ideas and the 
tolerant spirit of Hindu philosophy. 

The early architectural monuments of the Saiva revival, of 
which the temples at Badami are typical, are all impressed 
with the great intellectuality and refinement which distin- 
guished Brahman culture before popular Hinduism obscured 
the clarity of its thought with its own fantastic and turgid 
imagery. These seventh-century temples, rivalHng the more 
famous temples of Greece in their noble design and superb 
craftsmanship, mark the time when Badami was the capital 
of the Chalukyan kings ; for they, like the Cholas, were patrons 
of Saivism. The last but one of their line, Vikramaditya II 
[circa 733-747), built the splendid temple of Virupaksha at 
Pattadakal, which must have been one of the great centres of 
Brahmanical learning in the South. In the eighth century 
every South Indian dynasty which played any considerable 
part in the history of the times supported the Saiva movement. 
The Pallavas at Conjeveram, before the Cholas made it their 
242 



i 



ARTISTIC RECORD OF THE SOUTH 

capital, built the Kailasanatha temple. At Mamallapuram, 
in the same century, their royal craftsmen sculptured some of 
the famous Raths. The period of the Chola Empire beginning 
in the middle of the tenth century with Parantaka I is celebrated 
by the oldest part of the Chidambaram temple ; but the most 
magnificent of the Chola monuments, the great temple at 
Tanjore and the ruined temple and irrigation works at Gangai- 
konda-Cholapuram, commemorate the triumphs of Rajaraja 
and his son, Rajendra I, at the end of the tenth and beginning 
of the eleventh centuries. Gangaikonda-Cholapuram was the 
new capital built by Rajendra after his great career of conquest 
was achieved ; the name having reference to his defeat of the 
King of Gaur, who, it is said, brought Ganges water by way 
of tribute to consecrate the mighty reservoir constructed to 
irrigate the two adjoining districts. The embankment of it 
was a wonderful piece of masonry sixteen miles long, provided 
with the necessary sluices and channels for irrigation purposes. 
It was these magnificent public works of the Indo-Aryan 
tradition of kingship which in the eleventh century excited 
the wonder of Arabian travellers like Alberuni, who was not 
otherwise given to admiring things Indian. Alberuni's words 
are : " Our people, when they see them, wonder at them, and 
are unable to describe them, much less to construct anything 
like them." ^ He might have added that it was hardly a 
principle of Muslim government outside of India to concern 
itself with beneficent public works of this kind, unless they 
contributed to the comfort and pleasure of their divinely 
appointed kings or to the enjoyment of the faithful — and even 
then it was the labour and wealth of the ' infidels ' which provided 
them. 

The temple architecture of Southern India is especially 
interesting because in its present form it preserves more com- 
pletely than that of most other parts of India the fundamental 
idea of Indo-Aryan temple-planning. The temple and its 
enclosures were the abode of the Devas, and of the sons of the 
Devas — ^their devotees — and the model which this spiritual 

^ Alberuni's India, E. C. Sachau's translation, vol. ii, p. 144. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Sangha took for its town-planning was that of the Aryan 
village which sheltered the lay Sangha of the Indo-Aryan 
community. Its four gates at the four cardinal points were 
the ' gopurams,' the ' cattle-forts ' of the Aryan village fortress ; 
only there was a spiritual interpretation of the word, for the 
* cows ' which gave sustenance to this spiritual community 
were the four Vedas. The corridors at Ramesvaram which 
lead up from the gopurams to the holy shrine — ^the king's 
palace at the four cross- ways — are the Rajapatha and Vamana- 
patha of the Aryan town-plan ; those which form its Pradak- 
shina path represent the Mangalavithi.^ The mandapam of 
the shrine is the Council House ; the Halls of a Thousand 
Columns reproduce in the symbolism of sculptured stone the 
sacred groves and public orchards dedicated for the sustenance 
of sadhu and sannyasin. The bathing-tanks likewise represent 
those essentials of Aryan social life which the village republics 
so carefully ordered and maintained. The temple bazars 
along the outer walls occupy the sites appointed for them in 
the Indo-Aryan town-plan. All these different features of 
civic life were reproduced in temple-planning, though variations 
in detail are found in every temple, as very few were completely 
laid out from the beginning. Especially as regards their 
enclosures they represent the growth of many centuries. But 
the symbolism of Indian temple-building is always Indo- 
Aryan in the South as well as in the North, based upon the 
ideals given to India by her Aryan teachers. The temple was 
not only the college and Parliament-house of the Indo-Aryan 
community, in the last resort it was their citadel-fortress ; 
and this circumstance may have contributed largely to the 
wholesale destruction of temples and the massacre of monks and 
priests by the Muhammadans in Northern India. 

While the Buddhists have left very few traces of their 
architecture in Southern India, except the traditions which 
are embodied in the design of Saiva temples and monasteries, 
their rivals the Jains, who enjoyed a not inconsiderable share 
of royal patronage even in the time of the Saiva revival, have 

^ Supra, pp. 23-24. 
244 







20. Bronze Statuette of Nataraja' 



244 



ARTISTIC RECORD OF THE SOUTH 

preserved some fine memorials of their early history. At 
Ellora, the Indra Sabha and the Jagannatha Sabha are nearly 
contemporary with the great temple of Kailasa, and must have 
been excavated under the patronage of the Chalukyan kings, 
either those of the Badami or Rashtrakuta branch. In the 
Pandyan territory there is the exquisite monolithic temple of 
Kalugamalai, which is said to have been originally Jain. But 
the most famous Jain temples of Western India are of later 
date. Jain temple architecture, like the Buddhist and Brah- 
manical, has two distinct architectonic symbols, the stupa 
dome and the sikhara, according to the philosophic ideals to 
which the shrine was originally dedicated. The ascetic ideal 
was symbolised by the stupa dome, which crowned the tower 
of the shrine ; the layman's ideals — the hhakti- and karma- 
marga — were represented by the sikhara. A later develop- 
ment, also common to all sects, based upon a philosophical 
compromise — ^the via media — was symbolised by a combina- 
tion of the two structural types. In this case the sikhara is 
crowned by a stupa dome instead of by Vishnu's special symbol, 
the amalaka, or fruit of the blue lotus flower. This composite 
form was taken by Fergusson as the leading characteristic of 
his ' Chalukyan style,' because it is mostly found in the 
Chalukyan territory ; but this classification, like the ' Dravidian 
style,' is a purely arbitrary one which diverts attention from 
the vital principles of Indian architectural design, and should be 
abandoned by those who wish to penetrate into its psychology. 
The bronze sculpture of the great Chola period forms one 
of the most important chapters of Indian art, and from an 
historical point of view is invaluable for its unique impressions 
of the ideals of the Saiva cult. The images and idealised 
portraits of the Saiva revivalists preserved in the Madras and 
Colombo Museums and in the temples of the five lingams in 
Southern India reveal to us the passionate fervour of these 
South Indian hhaktas : Apparswami with his hands joined in 
prayer as he goes on his lifelong pilgrimage from shrine to 
shrine to weed the temple courtyards ; ^ Sundaramurti, the 
^ See Ideals oj Indian Art, by the author, p. 114, PI. XIV. 

245 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

youthful bridegroom, transfigured by the divine illumination 
which claimed him as a servant of the Lord Siva ; Sambandha, 
the inspired child, singing hymns in Siva's praise. 

In the bronze images of Siva as Nataraja the Chola royal 
craftsmen interpreted with consummate art the esoteric ideals 
of Saivism, following the noble traditions of Elephanta and 
Bllora, but giving full play to their own Dravidian fantasy 
and unrivalled skill as metal-workers. The Nataraja of Raja- 
raja's great temple at Tanjore ^ and two others from the 
Tanjore district in the Madras Museum are the masterpieces 
of the Chola period. In this great personification of the cosmic 
rhythm, Siva, surrounded by a halo of fire in the form of the 
setting sun, is dancing on the dwarf demon Tripura — ^the 
world, the flesh, and the devil — holding the sacrificial fire and 
beating the cosmic time with an hour-glass drum. The 
beautiful Sanskrit si okas which the Brahman priest recites in 
the service of the temple is the devotional interpretation of 
the symbolism : 

" O Lord of the Dance Who calls by beat of drum all who 
are absorbed in worldly things, and dispels the fear of the 
humble and comforts them with His Love divine : Who points 
with His hand to His uplifted Lotus-foot as the refuge of 
salvation : Who carries the fire of sacrifice and dances in the 
Hall of the Universe : do Thou protect us ! " 

^ First published by Mr O. C. Gangoly in his valuable monograph on South 
Indian bronzes (Indian Society of Oriental Art, 191 5). 



246 




CHAPTER XVI 

ISLAM'S FIRST FOOTING IN INDIA- 
NORTHERN INDIA FROM THE SEVENTH 
TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURIES 

B must now turn back to the history of India north of 
the Vindhyas, which has been brought down to the 
end of Harsha's reign. Harsha's death, about the 
beginning of a.d. 648, brought his dynasty to an end and 
broke up the empire he had created. Incidentally it led to the 
interference of China in the political affairs of Northern India. 
Since the days of Kanishka the spread of Buddhism in China 
had been gradually bringing the Far East into closer touch 
with India, chiefly by way of sea, which was the shorter and 
probably the safer route and the principal way of trade. In 
A.D, 526 Southern China became of more importance in the 
hierarchy of Buddhism than India itself, owing to Bodhidharma, 
who was the spiritual head of the Sangha at the time, and the 
twenty-eighth successor of the Buddha, transferring his seat 
to Canton. Whether this was one of the consequences of the 
Hun invasions or of the waning influence of Buddhism in the 
royal courts of India is not known ; but Bodhidharma was 
received with high honour at the court of Nanking, and China 
henceforth remained the seat of the Buddhist patriarchate, a 
circumstance which led to the migration of numbers of Indian 
Buddhists, both monks and laymen, to the Far Bast. 

In the seventh century the Chinese empire which united 
Northern and Southern China had reached the summit of its 
power under the Tang dynasty, and though Hiuen-Tsang had 
undertaken no diplomatic mission, Harsha's attachment to 
him as a masterly exponent of Buddhist doctrine made the 

247 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Indian Emperor wish to enter into friendly intercourse with 
the former's powerful patron at the Chinese court. In 641 
Harsha sent a complimentary mission headed by a Brahman 
to the Tang Emperor Tai-Tsung, which returned shortl}^ before 
Hiuen-Tsang left India accompanied by Chinese envoys bear- 
ing a friendly acknowledgment from their imperial master. 
The Chinese Emperor in 646 followed up this exchange of 
courtesies by sending another mission, probably to announce 
the safe return of Hiuen-Tsang with his precious collection of 
Buddhist treasures ; but before this reached India Harsha 
had died. 

Apparently the extravagant favours shown to the Buddhist 
Sangha by Harsha and his family had made him enemies in 
the imperial Council, for one of the ministers, Arjuna or 
Arunasa, succeeded in setting aside the claims of Harsha's 
family and in putting himself upon the throne. A student of 
Indo-Aryan history may venture to doubt whether the term 
' usurper ' which Mr Vincent Smith and other writers have 
used in describing this event can be justly applied to Arunasa. 
Indo-Aryan law did not vest the right of succession to the 
throne in the family of the reigning monarch absolutely : it 
was contingent on the approval of the State Council as repre- 
senting — de jure if not de facto — ^the whole Aryan community. 
It was no doubt the case that the power wielded by the Council 
in this respect was often only nominal, for the king had the 
right to choose and dismiss his own ministers, and in his own 
lifetime could ensure that they were subservient to his will. 
But we have already noticed several instances in which the 
Council, at the king's death, exercised their traditional preroga- 
tive, enabling them in the interest of the State to alter the line 
of succession to the throne ; and though Buddhist writers 
would naturally regard Arunasa as a ' usurper,' it is more 
than probable that he was the lawful successor of Harsha as 
the nominee of Harsha's ministers. 

The incident of the firing of the pavilion at Kanauj, if it 
were not an accident, shows that even in Harsha's lifetime 
there had been some who had dared to protest against the 
248 



I 



ISLAM'S FIRST FOOTING 

Emperor's pronounced partiality for Buddhism. Kumara, 
Harsha's most powerful vassal, did not share his suzerain's 
religious sympathies. In the seventh century Buddhism, at 
the height of its ascendancy in China, had lost to a great 
extent its influence as a popular religion in India, both in the 
North and in the South. It was therefore to be expected that 
orthodox Brahmanism would seize the opportunity of Harsha's 
death to reassert its political supremacy in Aryavarta. Of the 
disorders which followed the deposition of Harsha's family no 
detailed account is given. It may well be believed that they 
and their partisans were not disposed of by the mere fiat of 
the imperial Council, and the unrest which supervened was 
aggravated by a drought which caused a severe famine. But 
Arunasa, who had control of the imperial army, or the principal 
part of it, might have overcome these difficulties if he had not 
made the fatal blunder of allowing the Chinese envoys, who 
reached Magadha soon after his accession, to be insulted and 
maltreated. Their escort was massacred, but Wang-hiuen-tse, 
the leader of the mission, together with his deputy, succeeded 
in escaping to Nepal, which was then a dependency of the 
kingdom of Tibet. 

There they found not only friendly shelter but an army to 
avenge the outrages inflicted on them. The King of Tibet, 
Srong-Tsan-Gampo, was not only as ardent a Buddhist as 
Harsha himself, but a devoted ally of the Chinese Emperor, 
whose daughter, the Princess Wencheng, he had married. He 
promptly sent Wang-hiuen-tse a thousand Tibetan cavalry to 
join the army of seven thousand men which the Raja of Nepal 
had placed at his disposal. With their aid Wang-hiuen-tse 
soon overran Magadha and exacted terrible vengeance for the 
insults inflicted on him. The chief town of the northern 
province was captured after a short but bloody siege, and three 
thousand of the garrison were beheaded as a punishment. In 
subsequent battles Arunasa's armies were completely broken, 
and he himself together with his entire family became Wang- 
hiuen-tse's captives. Kumara, Harsha's ally, found it politic 
to assist the Chinese general by sending him military equipment 

249 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and large supplies of cattle ; and no doubt he profited by the 
collapse of Harsha's empire to assert his independence in Assam 
and Eastern Bengal. Wang-hiuen-tse, when his victorious 
campaign was ended, returned to China to report the tragic 
results of his mission to the Emperor^ taking the miserable 
Arunasa with him. In 657 he visited India once more, but 
this time as a peaceful Buddhist pilgrim to worship at the 
shrines of the Blessed One, following the usual route of Chinese 
pUgrims at that time, which was to enter India through Nepal 
and return through Northern India by the passes of the Hindu 
Kush. 

The effect of the break-up of Harsha's empire in shifting 
the dynamic centre of Indo-Aryan culture from Magadha to 
Dravida, or India south of the Vindhyas, has already been 
described. The further consequence of the political disintegra- 
tion of Aryavarta was more disastrous, for it gave the Arabs 
the opportunity they were seeking of setting a firm foot in 
India. About 710 one of the armies of the Khalif Wahd, 
under the command of a young Arab chieftain named Muham- 
mad ibn Kasim, then only seventeen years old, invaded Sind, 
and after defeating and killing the Brahman king Dahir, 
conquered the whole of the Indus valley from the delta of the 
river up to Multan. 

The first Muhammadan conquerors of India, though inspired 
by a fanatical hatred of the idolator, inherited some of the 
chivalrous characteristics of the Arab race, for the Arabs 
formed the civilising leaven in the uncultured world of Islam. 
The early Arab historians were generous in praise of the people 
of India. Thus Al Idrisi, who compiled a book of travel at 
the end of the eleventh century, wrote that " Indians are 
naturally inclined to justice and never depart from it in their 
actions. Their good faith, honesty, and fidelity to their engage- 
ments are well known, and they are so famous for these qualities 
that people flock to their country from every side." ^ Muliam- 
mad Kasim was relentless in severity towards the Kshatriya 
warriors who opposed him, but when his victory was complete 

1 Elliot's History of India, vol. i, p. 88. 
250 



ISLAM'S FIRST FOOTING 

he found it expedient to employ the Brahmans in pacifying 
the country by taking them into his confidence. He allowed 
them to repair their temples and to follow their own religion 
as before, placed the collection of revenue in their hands, and 
employed them in continuing the traditional system of local 
administration. ^ 

The principles of Muhammadan rule, however, always showed 
a sharp contrast to those of the Aryan lawgivers. The infidels 
whose lives were spared were allowed to exist so that they 
might contribute by their industry and skill to the sustenance 
and comfort of the faithful. Sind contributed a large annual 
tribute to the treasury of the Elhalif at Baghdad, raised by 
special taxes imposed upon non-Musulmans. A strong economic 
pressure was brought to bear upon the Hindu population to 
persuade them to embrace Islam, for those who did so were 
ipso facto relieved from payment of the capitation tax and 
other special imposts, and acquired all the rights of a Musalman 
citizen in the law-courts, where the Quran and not Aryan law 
and custom decided disputes in all cases. This method of 
proselytising was very effective among the lower castes of 
Hindus, especially among those who suffered from the severity 
of Brahmanical law with regard to the ' impure ' classes. 

Though the Arabs were disposed to admire Indians for their 
strict regard for justice, they had little feeling for it themselves 
in their dealings with the ' infidels.' Muhammad Kasim had 
received invaluable help in defeating the Brahman King of 
Sind from certain tribes of Jats and Meds who were smarting 
under the tyranny of their native rulers. But so far from 
rewarding them for the services they had rendered to the 
cause of Islam he reimposed upon them and their chiefs all the 
disabilities from which they had suffered imder the Brahman 
rule. Moreover, the Arab conquest let loose upon Sind a 
motley horde of greedy adventurers who when a less firm hand 
than that of Muhammad Kasim held the reins of government 
maltreated and fleeced the Hindu inhabitants unmercifully. 
It was not imtil the Musalman invaders had made India their 

^ Elliot's History of India, vol. i, pp. 182-191. 

251 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

home and the Aryan traditions of India had been grafted upon 
the wild Arab stem that Islam took its place, at least for a 
time, as a civilising power in the world. 

The Arab historians give conflicting accounts of the tragic 
end of Muhammad Kasim. One states that he was recalled 
and tortured to death by order of the Khalif Sulaiman. But 
the majority declare that the two virgin daughters of the 
Brahman king Dahir, who had been sent to Baghdad for the 
Khalif Walid's harem, in revenge for their father's death 
accused Muhammad Kasim of having violated them, whereupon 
the furious Khalif wrote a letter in his own hand to his general 
and commanded him that immediately on receipt of it he 
should suffer himself to be sewn up in a raw cowhide and sent 
thus to the capital. Implicit obedience to the commands of 
the Khalif as Allah's representative on earth was the duty 
of every Musalman ; so Muhammad Kasim without hesitation 
ordered his people to sew him up in a hide. After two days 
he delivered his soul to God, while his body was placed in a 
chest and forwarded to the Khalif. When the corpse was 
shown to the Brahman girls they taunted the Khalif for his 
unreasonable cruelty, confessing that they had brought a false 
charge against the young general to bring about his death, 
because he had killed their father, destroyed their holy temples, 
and reduced the daughters of the * twice-born ' to slavery. 
The climax of the tragedy was that the IChalif ordered the 
two girls to be immured alive ; or according to other accounts 
they were tied to horses' tails and dragged round the city until 
they were dead.^ 

As the Khalifate of Baghdad grew more effete and corrupt, 
after the extinction of the Abbasid dynasty, it ceased to exercise 
any control over the province of Sind. From a political point 
of view the Arab conquest of Sind was a comparatively insignifi- 
cant event in the Muhammadan world, and it has been treated 
as such by Anglo-Indian historians. But the importance of 
the conquest for its effect upon the whole culture of Islam has 
been little understood. For the first time the nomads of the 

^ Blphinstone's History of India, vol. i, p. 437. 
252 



ISLAM'S FIRST FOOTING 

Arabian desert, with their more cultured brethren of the 
Arabian Httoral, fired with the rehgious fervour of the Prophet 
of Mekka, found themselves in the holy land of the Aryans in 
close contact with Indo-Aryan civilisation, which from all 
points of view, politically, economically, and intellectually, had 
reached a far higher plane than their own. The Sultans of 
Sind entered into friendly relations with the powerful Hindu 
kings of the Rashtrakuta line, who permitted the Arabs not 
only to establish mercantile settlements within their dominions 
along the west coast, but to build mosques and live according 
to the laws of Islam. 

To the poetic imagination of the Arab tribesmen, India, with 
its gorgeous temples and monasteries carved in the living rock, 
its palace-fortresses and magnificent irrigation works of massive 
masonry, must have seemed a land of wonders, of djinns and 
great magicians. In all the arts of peace India then stood at 
the pinnacle of her greatness. The Arab conquered with his 
sword, but came to learn at the Mother's feet the wisdom which 
had inspired his own great Prophet. The mullas of Islam, 
disgusted though they might be with the outward forms of 
popular Hindu ritual, soon learnt that the formula " There is 
one God and Muhammad is His Prophet," which seemed to 
them so great an inspiration, was no revelation to the Hindu 
philosopher. The Arab chieftains might hate the Kshatriya 
warrior and despise the Buddhist and Brahman monk, but 
they were charmed by the skill of Indian musicians and the 
cunning of the Hindu painter. Their young fighting men dis- 
covered that the lotus-eyed maidens of the ' twice-born ' were 
as fair as the houris of their desert dreams. The Indian crafts- 
men were as indispensable to the Muslim city-builders as they 
had been to the Indo-Aryan kings. The dome of the temple 
mandapam, shorn of its exuberant symbolism, which was so 
offensive to the unsophisticated mentality of the Arab — because 
the things it spoke of were beyond the range of his philosophy — 
became the dome of the Muslim mosque and tomb. The 
simplified symbolism of Muslim ritual was all borrowed from 
India. The pointed arch of the prayer carpet and mihrab — 

253 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

afterwards the characteristic feature of Saracenic architecture — 
was the symboHc arch of the Buddhist and Hindu shrine. The 
' horseshoe ' arch was the sun-window of Buddhist chaitya 
halls and Hindu temples. The cathedral mosques of Mushm 
royalty were oriented like the Vishnu temple, and their entrances 
corresponded to the temple gopurams and the gates of the 
Indo-Aryan village. The minars of the mosque were adapta- 
tions of Indian Towers of Victory, which were an elaboration 
of Indo-Aryan royal standards. Finally, under Turkish domi- 
nation, the ensign of Islam became the crescent moon, Siva's 
bow, which had been the symbol of India — ' the I^and of the 
Moon ' — or of India's holy land, Aryavarta, ages before the 
Prophet of Mekka was born. 

In Sind the Arab sheikhs had their first practical lessons in 
Indo-Aryan statecraft under the guidance of their Brahman 
ofiicials. They learnt to adapt their own primitive patriarchal 
polity to the complicated problems of a highly organised system 
of government evolved by centuries of Aryan imperial rule. 
Soon after the Arabs established themselves in the Indus valley 
the victory of Charles Martel at the battle of Tours saved 
Western Europe from Muslim rule, and the empire of Charle- 
magne (a.d. 771-814) was the political counterpoise in the West 
to the Khalifate of Baghdad under the Abbasid dynasty. It 
was in Mesopotamia, especially in the glorious days of Hartin-al- 
Raschid (a.d. 786-809), that the foundations of Saracenic culture 
were laid. The court language, etiquette, and literary accom- 
plishments were borrowed from the Iranian branch of Aryan 
civilisation, in the centre of which the founders of the Abbasid 
dynasty had been nurtured. But all the scientific elements 
which formed Arabic scholarship and in later times made it 
famous in Europe — philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and 
medicine — were in the eighth century borrowed directly from 
India. Through the Arab occupation of the Indus and Euphrates 
valleys Islam was enabled to tap the inexliaustible resources of 
India, spiritual and material, and to become the agents for 
their distribution over the whole of Europe — a relationship 
which continued to exist long after the outlying territories of 
254 



ISLAM'S FIRST FOOTING 

Islam in Europe had asserted their independence of the 
Khalifate of Baghdad. 

Every student of the history of Arab civilisation must 
recognise the great impetus which it gave to European learn- 
ing ; but Musalman historians are prone to ignore the debt 
of the Arabs to Indo- Aryan culture, and thus to form an exag- 
gerated opinion of the creative work of Islam in. India. The 
knowledge of chemistry, medicine and pharmacy, mathematics 
and astronomy which the Arabs disseminated in Europe was 
almost wholly derived from Indian sources. Their sudden 
intellectual awakening and great devotion to learning can 
hardly be attributed to the influence of the teaching of Islam, 
which made the Quran the depository of all knowledge neces- 
sary for the spiritual and intellectual sustenance of the faithful. 
It was not in the Western schools of the Dark Ages that they 
could have caught the enthusiasm of the scholar. The great 
universities of North-western India, which were famous 
throughout Asia for the very sciences in which the Arabs 
afterwards excelled, had all the traditions of scholarship and 
the subtle intellectual atmosphere which stimulate the mental 
activity of the student. And in the early days of the Arab 
conquests, before Islam could boast of any universities of its 
own, these were the schools to which high-born Arab youth in 
Persia and India would go in quest of knowledge. 

In the early days of the Arab occupation of Sind, while it 
still formed part of the Khalifate, Indian pandits brought to 
the court of Manstir at Baghdad the celebrated works of 
Brahmagupta, the Brahmdsiddhdnta and Khandakhddyaka, 
which were translated by Muslim scholars and formed the 
basis of Arabic astronomical knowledge.^ In the palmy days 
of the great Harun the influence of Indian scholarship was 
supreme at the Baghdad court. The most trusted friends and 
advisers of the Khalif, belonging to the Barmak family, were 
said to be descendants of the abbot of a Buddhist monastery 
in Balkh, whence the riiling dynasty itself had come. Through 
their influence Hindu physicians were brought to Baghdad to 
^ Alberuni's India, Sachau's translation, p. xxxi. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

organise hospitals and medical schools. Hindu scholars helped 
to translate into Arabic many of the principal Sanskrit works 
on philosophy, logic, mathematics, medical science, and other 
subjects.^ The high-born youth of Arabia began to join the 
crowd of students which gathered from all parts of Asia in the 
great universities of India. Taksha-sila, the university specially 
noted for its medical schools, would have been the most acces- 
sible to the students of Baghdad through the Arab command 
of the sea and river communications. 

Although after the glory of the Abbasid Khalifs was eclipsed 
Arabic scholars turned to the Hellenic branch of Aryan learn- 
ing for further inspiration, it was India and not Greece that 
taught Islam in the impressionable years of its youth, formed 
its philosophy and esoteric religious ideals, and inspired its 
most characteristic expression in literature, art, and architec- 
ture. The political relationship between Baghdad and India 
ended when Sind became independent of the Khalifate, and 
Arabian scholars ceased to occupy themselves with the transla- 
tion of Indian writings when Hellenic thought began to attract 
them ; but intercourse between India and Mesopotamia, which 
had existed even before Aryan kings ruled in Babylon, was 
not broken off by political changes. By the time the Arab 
dynasties which first made Islam a civilising influence had 
fallen, China, the fellow-student of Arabia in the universities 
of India, began to assist in the development of Muslim culture 
in Asia, until the conquest of Hindustan by the Musalman 
armies brought Islam to its Motherland and enabled it to 
progress further in the paths of peace under the most liberal . 
of the Muhammadan sovereigns of India. 

It must, however, be recognised that the Arabs in Europe 
soon made themselves independent of Indian teaching and 
developed schools of their own which gave a new impetus to 
scientific research. The follower of Islam, though he might 
draw upon Indian sources of knowledge, would on conscientious 
grounds refuse to recognise the religious basis upon which all 
Hindu teaching was formulated ; and as he had no scientific 

^ Alberuni's India, Sachau's translation, pp. xxxi-xsxii. 
256 



ISLAM'S FIRST FOOTING 

Sastras of his own he would naturally seek to create them by 
methods of original research. Through this secularisation of 
Hindu religious knowledge the Arabs laid the foundation of 
Western experimental science, which has often appropriated to 
itself the credit of discoveries which really belong to Buddhist 
and Hindu India. But a distinction must always be drawn 
between Arab, or Saracenic, culture and that of Muhammadan 
India, for they always remained apart. The Arabs never won 
for themselves a permanent political footing in India, nor did 
the Western school of Islam ever take any strong hold upon 
the mentality or religious feeling of the Indian Musalman 
before English teachers with little or no knowledge of Indian 
history undertook the direction of education in India. Fortu- 
nately for the British Raj, Indian Musalmans in remaining true 
to their Indian Mother have proved true to themselves. 

The Arab governors of Sind after Muhammad Kasim were 
not successful in enlarging the boundaries of the province, 
though they were at constant war with their Hindu neighbours 
on the east and north. The Abbasid Khalifs made no organised 
attempt to pursue the conquest of India begun by Walid's 
general. On the other hand, they maintained very friendly 
intercourse with the Rashtrakilta dynasty which ruled over 
the greater part of Western India. It was left to the Turki 
dynasties of Ghazni to carry out the systematic policy of 
plunder and massacre which gradually broke the economic 
strength of the Northern Hindu states and opened the way to 
the final subjugation of India by the Muhammadans. 

But the victorious progress of Islam in India is not to be 
accounted for by external reasons. It was mainly due to the 
political degeneration of Aryavarta which set in after th© 
death of Harsha. While the south of India was being con- 
solidated under the Chola rule, the north was split up into a 
number of independent states, the mutual jealousies of which 
bUnded them to the dangers which threatened all from the 
constantly increasing strength of the enemy at their gates. 
The social programme of the Prophet, which, like the law of 
the Buddha, gave every true believer an equal spiritual status 

R 257 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

within the community of Islam, had precisely the same political 
effect in the Islamic world as Asoka's propaganda had in Arya- 
varta — it made Islam a political and social synthesis and gave 
it an imperial mission. The peculiarly favourable geographical 
formation of India confined the political empire of Aryavarta 
to the boundaries of India itself, but the dominions of the 
Khalifate lacked the physical demarcations which the Hima- 
layas and the encircling ocean gave to the conquests of the 
Aryans in India, and thus the war-lords of Islam were con- 
stantly occupied with schemes of world-conquest. A united 
Aryavarta offered an impenetrable front to the foreign invader. 
Disunion opened the gateways of the Himalayas and exposed 
the whole coast-line of Aryavarta to attack. 

Islam reached the zenith of its political strength at the 
critical period when the conflict between Buddhist philosophy 
and that of orthodox Brahmanism was a potent cause of 
political dissensions in Northern India. We have already 
noticed the effect of these dissensions as a contributory cause 
of the break-up of Harsha's empire. Islam had the immense 
advantage that, however much the faithful might quarrel over 
the distribution of the spoils of conquest, the dogmas of their 
spiritual faith were so simple and clearly stated that they gave 
little cause for disputes disturbing greatly the peace of the 
Musalman world or dividing it against itself, though a hundred 
sects might wrangle over minor points of ritual. 

And, however fanatical the Muhammadan might be in his 
religious beliefs, he was rarely inspired by that intense desire 
to penetrate into the secrets of the Universe which made the 
Hindu so willing to give up all worldly attachments and seek 
communion with the Infinite in the seclusion of the monasterj'^ 
or in the peace of the forest asram. Islam, like the Law of 
Buddha, was a rule of life sufficient for the happiness of average 
humanity, content to take the world as it is and leave philo- 
sophers to wrangle over the cause of all things. 

It was this passionate absorption in her spiritual quest of 
which Islam itself was but a faint reflection, which was at 
once the source of India's greatness and of her weakness. 
258 



ISLAM'S FIRST FOOTING 

Buddhism especially, by its huge monastic organisation, helped 
to emasculate the manhood of India. The conquest of Sind 
by the Arabs was made easy by the fact that thousands of the 
male population had adopted the yellow robe for the sake of 
the easy life of the monastery. They were not like the monks 
of Nalanda and other great seats of Buddhist learning, for 
they were accounted as idle, dissolute fellows who had no 
regard for their own reputation or for the rules of their Order. 
The monastic system continued to absorb a large proportion 
of the flower of Indian manhood even after the development 
of Brahman philosophy added Buddhism to the Hindu syn- 
thesis, for every great Hindu temple which was built meant 
the dedication of public or private funds for the maintenance 
of priests, temple-servants, Brahman students and their gurus, 
sadhus and sannyasins. And it was the period from the 
seventh century to the time of Mahmud of Ghazni which was 
the most prolific in religious building — a time when Hindu 
monarchs vied with each other in the magnificence and number 
of their temples, when sacred hills were converted into cities 
of the gods, and when hundreds of thousands of skilled artisans 
were diverted from ordinary industrial pursuits to the pious 
labour of elaborating the embellishment of the temple service 
in stone, bronze, precious metals, and costly fabrics. This 
was an occupation which Western political economists regard 
as extravagantly wasteful and unprofitable when they compare 
it with the modern ' progressive ' system which condemns 
millions of men, women, and children to the intellectual and 
moral degradation of factory labour, and employs the highest 
intelligence of the nation in the invention and manufacture of 
engines of destruction. The medieval system, however un- 
scientific and wasteful it might have been, was abundantly 
productive. The amazing accumulation of wealth stored in 
Indian temple treasuries more than anything else excited the 
cupidity of the Muhammadan invaders and made their pious 
predatory raids highly profitable undertakings. 

Brahmanical social science did indeed provide some checks 
against the flagrant abuses of monasticism which the demo- 

259 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

cratic principles of Buddhism tended to encourage. The merit 
of the much-abused caste system was that it formed an auto- 
matic process of selection of the fittest for every vocation in 
life ; and so long as the barriers of caste were as easy to 
overcome as they were in pre-Muhammadan times it may be 
questioned whether the examination system or any other 
artificial selective method has proved itself superior from the 
point of view of eugenics, or economics, or of spiritual progress. 
Though the high ethical ideals of Buddhism had won for India 
the respect of the whole Eastern world, the weakness of its 
political and social economy was the chief cause of the success 
of the Muhammadan arms. Buddhism had fatally impaired 
the efficiency of the Kshatriya caste in the special work of 
national defence which Brahman sociology had assigned to it. 
For several centuries, indeed, the Rajput states which main- 
tained their traditional organisation and martial ardour kept 
their own territories inviolate ; but the political disorganisa- 
tion of Northern India after the death of Harsha left so many 
weak spots in India's armour that the plateau of Rajputana 
gradually became like a great hill-fortress invested on all sides 
by the armies of Islam. So long as Aryavarta was united 
under a Chakra-vartin, or xmiversal monarch, as in the time 
of the Maury as and Guptas, and to some extent imder Harsha, 
the chieftains of the Rajput communities owned allegiance to 
the central power, contributed their share of military service 
to the imperial armies, and merged their political individu- 
ality in the empire. But the gradual disintegration of the 
empire by the Muhammadan invasions instinctively impelled 
the fighting Kshatriyas scattered over the plains to rally round 
their hereditary chieftains in the hill-fortresses of Rajputana 
and Central India, the natural home of the Kshatriya, hallowed 
by the most sacred associations of their Aryan ancestors. 

The claims to Aryan ancestry of some of these fighting clans 
might be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the ethnologist, 
and doubtless many of the foreign invaders of India had been 
admitted within the Aryan pale. But they were all united 
in devotion to Aryan traditions, and only Aryan honour and 
260 



THE RAJPUTS 

acknowledged claims to descent from Aryan heroes gave prece- 
dence in their order of nobility. Many of these fighting clans 
were Aryanised in the same way as the Dravidian dynasties 
had been in much earlier times, through their Aryan wives 
won in war with the Indo- Aryan tribes — ^the rdkshasa form of 
marriage, or by right of capture, being one of those recognised 
by Hindu law as appropriate for Kshatriyas. Thus the claims 
to Aryan ancestry of some modern Rajput tribes may not be 
so illusory as they are reckoned by scientific investigators. 

However that may be, the Rajputs who were Aryans only 
by right of valour became as proud of the name as the full- 
blooded Kshatriya, and as willing to lay down their lives 
in defence of their beloved Aryavarta ; though the mutual 
jealousies of different tribes gave rise to constant internecine 
warfare, which was always fatal to their power of resistance 
to a well-organised attack from beyond the frontier. 

In the three and a half centuries which intervened between 
the death of Harsha and the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni 
there were a number of more or less important Rajput states, 
with a chain of great hill-fortresses as points d'appui, which 
kept up the ancient patriarchal traditions of Aryan culture in 
the form peculiar to the Kshatriya communities, such as 
survive to some extent in modern Rajputana. In the history 
of these miniature Aryavartas one does not hear so much of 
the ancient popular Assemblies which the Buddha took for the 
model of his Sangha, and which continued to have so much 
political influence in Southern India throughout medieval 
times. But the self-governing village communities under the 
protection of the Kshatriya fighting men continued to form 
the foundation of the body politic so long as the Rajput states 
remained independent and kept alive their Aryan traditions. 
The Sudra cultivators were the proprietors of the soil, their 
rights being maintained by an immemorial tradition which the 
common law of Aryavarta made inviolable. "In accordance 
with this principle," says Tod in tho^ Annals of Rajast'han,^ " is 
the ancient adage, not of Mewar only but all Rajputana — 

1 Vol. i, p. 494. 

261 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Bhog ra dhanni Raj ho : bhom ra dhanni ma cho — ' The Govern- 
ment is owner of the rent, but I am the master of the land.' " 
Each commune with its guilds of craftsmen and industrial 
co-operative societies was "an imperium in imperio, a little 
republic, maintaining its municipal legislation independent of 
the monarchy, on which it relies for general support, and to 
which it pays the bhog, or tax in kind, as the price of this 
protection." ^ The sovereign could dispossess the fighting 
chiefs who owed allegiance to him as the head of their clan 
of the estates they held in fief from the Crown ; he was the 
landlord of the Khalisa demesne — the Crown lands which were 
leased to cultivators — and the proprietor of mines, marble 
quarries, and reserved forests. But over the lands of the 
peasant freeholders neither the sovereign nor the chief had any 
proprietary rights, except such as the peasant himself or the 
commune was willing to confer. Thus a chieftain, or Thakur, 
says Tod, when inducted into a perpetual fief by the Rana, 
would try to insure himself against the loss of it by obtaining 
from the ryot or the commune a few acres of freehold land, 
with the knowledge that if through his sovereign's displeasure 
he should forfeit his seigniorial estates and cease to be a Thakur, 
his rights as a Bhumia, or owner, could never be set aside. ^ 
The vState could call for the military service of these Bhumias, 
the yeomen of Rajasthan, but their land [hhum) was exempt 
from the jurih (measuring rod) , it was never assessed, and they 
only paid a quit-rent, in most cases triennial, and a war-tax — ■ 
the khur-lakur. 

The supreme ruler of these Rajput states had doubtless 
many means of oppression and exaction, but he was far from 
being an irresponsible despot like a Muhammadan Khalif or 
Sultan. The petty chieftain was as jealous as his overlord of 
his own rights and those of his retainers ; and the assembly 
of the chieftains which was summoned to advise upon important 
State affairs was a real check upon the abuse of sovereign 
power. There was a well-regulated distribution of political 
and civil rights throughout the different grades of society, 

^ Tod's Annals of Rajast'han, vol. i, p. 495. ^ Ibid., p. 496. 

262 



THE RAJPUTS 

from the highest to the lowest, kept in balance and adjusted 
from time to time, not by formal Acts of Parliament, but by 
the highly developed culture and religious sense of the people, 
which made the common law of the land — ^the Dharma — as 
sacred as the Vedas and binding upon the monarch as well 
as the meanest peasant. It is this culture and religion which, 
in spite of Western ' education,' make the Rajput of to-day 
as loyal to the British Raj as he was to his Mogul overlord 
when the wise statesmanship of Akbar won the alliance of the 
chiefs of Rajputana. 

The Annals of Rajast'han contain references to the struggles 
with the Arabs in which the famous citadel of Chitor became 
the chief rallying-point of the Rajput clans, as it was during 
the subsequent attacks of the Turks under Mahmud and those 
of the Moguls under Babur and his successors. Here, it is 
said, the son of Dahir found a refuge after his father's kingdom 
was lost. It is interesting to note that the Hindu chroniclers 
in referring to their Arab enemies of this time always apphed 
to them the name of the ancient foes of the Aryans in Meso- 
potamia, the ' Asuras,' ^ thus definitely associating the Arabs 
with their Semitic ancestors, the Assyrians. In other respects 
the conditions of Aryavarta brought back the ancient heroic 
times. The fighting ground upon which the Rajput chieftains 
were struggling with the Arab invaders was the scene of the 
great Aryan epic, the Mahabharata. Close to Indraprastha, 
the Delhi of that time, was the field of Kurukshetra, where the 
Pandavas and Kauravas met in deadly conflict. Panchala, one 
of the great Rajput states which took part in the struggle, was 
known in Aryan legends as the kingdom over which, when the 
Great War was ended, the Brahman who taught the Pandavas 
the use of divine weapons, the wise Drona, ruled. Malwa, under 
its ancient name of Avanti, or the kingdom of Ujjain, had been 
also one of the earliest centres of Aryan culture, its university 
having been famous even in the time of the Buddha. 

The epic times were also recalled by the constant quarrels 
between themselves, or with their neighbours in the Dekhan, 
^ Tod's Annals of Rajast'han, vol. i, p. 247. 

263 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

which occupied the attention of these different Indo-Aryan 
states when they were not forced to repel the attacks of the 
Arab armies. But the epigraphical record in which the student 
can find the somewhat dreary details of this internecine strife — 
so far as archaeological research has gone — should not make 
the historian overlook the fact that the centuries immediately 
before the Muhammadan conquest of India were as rich in 
art and literature and in splendid works of public utility as 
the palmy days of the Great Moguls, for in spite of the ravages 
of Turk and Mongol much remains to testify to it even in the 
present day. In the eighth century the court of Yasovarman, 
Raja of Kanauj, was distinguished for its dramatists, among 
them Bhavabhuti, author of Mdlatimddhava and other famous 
Sanskrit plays. Rajasekhara, noted as the author of the drama 
Karpura-manjun, was a minister of Mahendrapala, one of 
Yasovarman's successors at the end of the ninth century. 
The Paramara dynasty of Malwa, founded in the ninth century, 
well maintained the ancient fame of the Ujjain court for 
literary and artistic culture. The poems of Munja, the seventh 
raja (974-995), have been handed down to the present day ; 
he was renowned for his scholarship and literary gifts as well 
as for his skill at arms. His nephew Bhoja (1018-1060), who 
was contemporary with Mahmud of Ghazni, revived the 
glorious memories of the Gupta dynasty by his own accomplish- 
ments and those of his court poets, master-builders, artists, 
and scientists. " His fame," says Mr Vincent Smith, " as 
an enlightened patron of learning and a skilled author remains 
undimmed, and his name has become proverbial as that of 
the model king according to the Hindu standard. Works on 
astronomy, architecture, the art of poetry, and other subjects 
are attributed to him, , , , A mosque at Dhara now occupies 
the site of Bhoja's Sanskrit college, which seems to have been 
held in a temple dedicated appropriately to Sarasvati, the 
goddess of learning." ^ 

The narrow sectarian will regard the extraordinary develop- 
ment of temple-building in this period only as evidence of 

^ Early History of India, 2nd edit., p. 365. 
264 




21. Kandarya Mahadeva Temple, Khajuraho 



264 



THE RAJPUTS 

profound superstition and moral depravity, in ignorance of the 
fact that in a religious system founded not merely upon dogmas 
but upon a science of social life the temple combined the 
service of God with various works of public utility, instruction, 
and recreation. Many of the great temples, like those at 
Khajuraho,^ with which the Chandela and other dynasties 
adorned their capitals, served not only as schools for secular 
as well as religious instruction : the series of halls with their 
splendid domes and sculptured pillars which formed the 
approaches of the sacred shrine were the assembly hall, theatre, 
and music-hall of the people. The economic needs of the 
community were not less sumptuously provided for by the 
rulers of these Rajput states. All over the country they 
administered are ruins of the great irrigation works by which 
they both assisted agriculture and added to the amenities of 
popular life, in which the Rajput monarch took a much larger 
share than was usually the case in other aristocratic systems 
of government. Bhoja of Malwa added to his fame as a patron 
of arts and letters by the great artificial lake of Bholpur, 250 
square miles in extent, created by throwing embankments of 
solid masonry across the watershed of a circle of hills. The 
name of the Muhammadan king in the fifteenth century who 
upheld the glory of Islam by destroying it has not been recorded. 
The rajas of the Chandel dynasties and many others of the 
warrior chieftains who came into prominence at this time 
were equally active in temple-building as in promoting these 
great irrigation works, and some of these still remain to fertilise 
and beautify the valleys between the hill-forts of Malwa, 
Rajputana, and Central India. 

Before Mahmud of Ghazni broke through the defences of 
Hindustan by his successive raids, the Rajput chieftains pre- 
sented a much more solid front to the invader than they did 
in later times. Most of the territory now known as Rajputana, 
together with some of the districts of the Panjab and the 
present United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, acknowledged 
the suzerainty of a powerful Rajput, King Nagabhata, who in 
^ See Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India, by the author, pp. 208-212. 

265 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

8 10 had conquered Kanauj and made it his capital. Kanauj 
after the death of Harsha remained the bone of contention 
for all the princes of Aryavarta who aspired to be a Chakra- 
vartin or universal monarch. At the close of the eighth century 
it had been more than once attacked by the kings of Kashmir : 
at the beginning of the ninth Dharmapala, King of Bengal, 
had dethroned its then ruler and made the Kanauj state 
tributary to him. The capture of the city by Nagabhata 
marked him out as the premier chief of Rajasthan. 

Nagabhata was the head of the Gurjaras, one of the fighting 
clans of foreign descent which had been admitted into the 
Aryan pale in the troublous times of the Hun invasions and 
had formed themselves into a Rajput state, having its capital 
at Bhinmal, or Srimal, not far from Mount Abu. One of 
Nagabhata's predecessors, Vatsaraja, had distinguished himself 
by defeating Gopala, the King of Bengal, who apparently 
attempted to lay hands on the former provinces of Harsha's 
empire. The kingdom of Kanauj, or Panchala, under its 
Gurjara ruler formed a barrier against hostile incursions into 
the Gangetic plain which none of the Arab rulers of Sind were 
able to penetrate. Muhammad Kasim was on the point of 
making the attempt when he received the fatal letter from the 
IChalif which ended his brilliant career as a general. The 
Gurjara kingdom maintained its supremacy over the Rajput 
clans for over a century, and perhaps might have continued 
to hold the Muslims at bay if it had not been weakened by its 
wars with the Rashtrakuta kings, one of whom, Indra III, 
captured Kanauj in a.d. 916, though he did not succeed in 
retaining possession of it. 

The eastern boundary of the Gurjara kingdom was con- 
terminous with that of Gaur, or Bengal, which under the 
Pala dynasty continued the zealous patronage of Buddhism 
which the Sangha had enjoyed in the days of Harsha. The 
ancient Magadha country, now known as Bihar, ' the Ivand of 
Monasteries,' remained its home province, with Pataliputra as 
its capital. Except for the Nepalese and Tibetan invasion 
previously recorded nothing definite is known of the history of 
266 



GAUR, OR BENGAL 

Bengal and Bihar for nearly a century after Harsha's death. 
About A.D. 730, however, Gopala, the first of the Pala dynasty — 
so called from the suffix signifying ' Protector ' or ' Defender ' 
which terminated the names of these kings — began to revive 
the glory of Magadha, but was checked in the attempt to 
recover its western provinces by Vatsaraja, the Rajput chief 
of Gurjara. Foiled in his ambition to bring the ' Five Indies ' 
under his banner, Gopala, like Harsha, sought to win undying 
glory in "the field of religious merit " by devoting the rich 
resources of his kingdom to the building and endowment of 
larger and more splendid monasteries and temples for the 
members of the Order. His successor, Dharmapala, ' the 
Defender of the Faith,' came to the throne towards the end 
of the eighth century, and is said to have reigned for sixty- 
four years. He renewed Gopala's attempt to extend his 
dominions westward, and so far succeeded that about a.d. 800 
he defeated and deposed Indrayudha, the King of Kanauj, 
but Nagabhata's capture of the city soon afterwards put an 
end to Dharmapala's plans of conquest in that direction, while 
it was equally effective in protecting the rich monasteries and 
temples of Bihar from any attack from the Arab marauders. 
Bengal was thus secured from the onslaughts of Islam until 
the end of the twelfth century, for although Mahmud of Ghazni 
sacked the city in 1018 he did not venture to push further 
east. All the Pala kings remained faithful to Buddhism, and 
continued to reign in Bengal until Qutb-ud-din's armies under 
Muhammad ibn Bakhtiyar captured Nudiah and laid waste 
Bihar. But about 1060 one of the local rajas of the Sena 
family ceased to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Pala kings, 
and by setting up an independent raj in the eastern part of 
Bengal accelerated the process of disintegration which brought 
Aryavarta to ruin. 

Among the different independent states which make up the 
political history of the period after the death of Harsha down 
to the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni, Kashmir holds a con- 
spicuous if not a distinguished place. The peculiar situation 
of the valley of Kashmir, enclosed by a circle of Himalayan 

267 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

mountains, and only accessible in a few places by long and 
difficult passes, gives its inhabitants a character of their 0"«ti 
different from those of the outside world, which few of them 
ever entered or knew except by listening to travellers' tales. 
The detached life they led would make their history a study 
by itself, and in the twelfth century a.d. Kashmir found an 
historian in a learned Brahman, Kalhana, the son of the 
Kashmir King Harsha's minister, Canpaka. But into the 
psychological causes which led to the total disregard of the 
first principle of Aryan self-government, self-control, the dis- 
solute life of most of its kings and the tyranny of the feudal 
landowners, Kalhana does not enter. Perhaps they may be 
found in the indolence and ignorance of the Brahman and 
Buddhist intellectuals, by which they gradually lost the political 
and social influence they enjoyed in Aryavarta, in the Turkish 
and Tibetan connections of some of the later rtding dynasties, 
and in the grape vine of the valley of Kashmir, the garden 
city of the Himalayas. 

In very early times Kashmir had been occupied by Aryan 
tribes, and for many centuries their rulers joined in the strenuous 
life of Aryavarta. It formed a part of the empire of Asoka, 
who is said to have built the ancient city of Srinagar, near the 
present capital. According to Kalhana, he also built not only 
many stupas in honour of the Blessed One, but renewed the 
outer wall of the ancient Saiva shrine of Vijayeshvara. Having 
regard to the intimate connection between Saiva and Buddhist 
symbolism there would be no inconsistency in a pious Buddhist 
worshipping at a Saiva shrine. Nor would the history of the 
life of the Buddha make it improbable that he was himself a 
Saiva devotee, who by the inspiration of genius made the 
philosophy of asceticism applicable to everj^day worldly life. 

The complete Aryanisation of Kashmir is attributed by 
Kalhana to a son of Asoka, Jalauka, who drove out the bar- 
barian oppressors, and introduced Aryan settlers and an Aryan 
system of government. The early part of the Kashmir 
chronicle is embellished with much legendary tradition, making 
Jalauka and other Kashmirian rulers mighty conquerors who 
268 



KASHMIR 

ruled over all Aryavarta. Kashmir was also a province of the 
Kushan Empire, and Buddhism flourished greatly there under 
Kanishka and Huvishka. The former is said to have held 
there the third General Assembly of the Sangha which was 
summoned to settle disputed points of doctrine and ritual, 
and Kalhana makes Nagarjiina, the apostle of the Mahayana 
doctrine, " the sole lord of the land " at that time.^ Kashmir 
also came under the sway of the Hun tyrant Mihiragtda, 
" the terrible enemy of mankind [who] had no pity for children, 
no compassion for women, no respect for the aged." ^ In his 
time the valley was overrun by hordes of barbarians, and the 
people knew the approach of the Hun armies by the vultures 
and crows which flew ahead of them. Evil-minded as the 
tyrant was, says Kalhana, he yet sought to win religious merit 
by building Saiva shrines and endowing Brahman monasteries, 
which the lowest of the ' twice-born,' as vile as their protector, 
did not disdain to accept. 

In the seventh century the Kashmir rulers did not, appa- 
rently, acknowledge Harsha of Thaneshar's suzerainty, though 
one of them was forced to surrender a precious relic, a tooth 
of the Buddha, which the Emperor coveted. At the time of 
Hiuen-Tsang's visit Buddhism was on the decline, but the 
King of Kashmir was powerful enough to exact tribute from 
the kingdom of Taksha-sila and other states lying at the foot 
of his own mountain walls. The decadence of Kashmir, 
politically and socially, seems to have begun with its more or 
less complete isolation from the rest of Aryavarta. Kalhana's 
chronicles bring out clearly an important principle of Indo- 
Aryan poHty, the power vested in the ministerial Council for 
checking the arbitrary conduct of the monarch, and for alter- 
ing the line of succession when the interests of the State 
demanded it. Thus Yudhisthira I was expelled from his 
kingdom for misconduct, and Kalhana pathetically describes 
the fallen King's departure from his capital, the distress of 
the citizens at seeing the sorry plight of his delicately nurtured 

^ Rajatarangini, i, 173 (Stein's translation). 
2 Ibid., i, 293. 

269 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Queen, and the misfortunes which overtook the royal party 
on their march to the frontier : " Marching on the lovely 
mountain paths, and seeking when tired the shade of the trees, 
he forgot by dint of his [daily] halting and marching his truly 
great misfortune. But when roused by the shouts of the low 
[hill-] folk, which reached his ear from afar, he appeared to 
sink back, as it were, into depths along with the waters of the 
mountain torrents. When his wives, whose figures were as 
delicate as the beautiful young shoots of the lotus-stalks, had 
passed through the forest regions, strongly scented with the 
fragrance of the various shrubs and herbs, and through the 
slippery [beds of the] mountain-streams with their rocks beaten 
by the tossing water, they bent their bodies over their laps 
and swooned from fatigue. When the King's wives, after 
casting a long glance at the distant land from the height of 
the mountain-boundary, threw all at once handfuls of flowers 
as a farewell offering, even the swarms of birds nesting in the 
mountain ravines cried plaintively in their excitement, and 
buried their beaks in their plumage spread out on the ground." ^ 

Similarly, in the history of the new dynasty brought in from 
abroad to fill the vacant throne, Kalhana records that an able 
and much ill-treated minister, Sandhimati, who had resisted 
the arbitrary conduct of the king, " consented to the prayer 
of the citizens to rule the country " when the throne again 
became vacant {Raj., ii, ii6). Again, when the Gonanda 
dynasty became extinct it was by the election of the ministerial 
Council, as representing the voice of the people, that a prince 
of the Karkota line was consecrated " with sacred water poured 
out from golden jars " (ii, 528). The traditional authority of 
the Supreme Council of State made one of the fundamental 
differences between Indo-Aryan polity and that of Islam, in 
which the sovereign ruled by divine right — derived from his 
descent from the Prophet, or bestowed upon him by the Khalif 
as the Prophet's representative, or won by the Prophet's own 
weapon, the sword. 

With the Karkota line the chronicles of Kashmir begin to 

1 Rdjatarangini, i, 369-371 (Stein's translation). 
270 



KASHMIR 

rest on a firmer chronological foundation. After narrating the 
pious benefactions and love affairs of the first of the dynasty 
Kalhana sings the prowess of I/alitadit^^a Muktapida, a great 
warrior, who about a.d. 740, or twenty-eight years after the 
Arab conquest of Sind, defeated Yasovarman, King of Kanauj . 
He also conducted many victorious campaigns against the 
Tibetans and Dards, and against the Turks, who had established 
a kingdom to the north of Sind on the upper waters of the Indus 
and in the Kabul valley. lyalitaditya seems to have had some 
family connections with the Turks of this region, for his 
minister, Cankuna, who filled his treasury with gold by his 
magical power, came from there, and Shahiya Turks, among 
others, were appointed by the King to the five high offices of 
State created to control the eighteen administrators of the 
ancient Aryan regime instituted by Asoka's son. In his 
conduct towards his conquered foes, and in his political 
testament bequeathed to his successors, I^alitaditya certainly 
seemed to be inspired by Turkish rather than Indo-Aryan 
principles : " Those who dwell there in the mountains difficult 
of access should be punished, even if they give no offence ; 
because sheltered by their fastnesses they are difficult to break 
up if they have once accumulated wealth. Every care should 
be taken that there should not be left with the villages more 
food-supply than required for the year's consumption, or more 
oxen than wanted for the tillage of their fields ; because, if 
they keep more wealth, they would become in a single year 
very formidable Damaras and strong enough to neglect the 
commands of the King " (iv, 346-348). Evidently here is the 
secret of Cankuna's magical power in filling the King's treasury 
, with gold. 

However, lyalitaditya, when not intoxicated, seems to have 
been a wise and liberal ruler of his own people : both he 
and his Prime Minister were active in promoting beneficent 
public works of a religious and economic character. He dis- 
tributed the water of the Vitasta to various villages by con- 
, structing a series of water-wheels. Cankuna's wife constructed 
a well " the water of which was as pure as nectar and gave 

271 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

health to the ailing " {Raj., iv, 212) ; and the ruins of the 
famous temple of Martand still remain as a record of the great 
days of lyalitaditya. 

After a reign of thirty-six years he was followed by Kuvalaya- 
pida, who soon found the cares of State too heavy for him and 
took refuge in a forest hermitage. Then followed a succession 
of dissolute and avaricious sovereigns who disgraced the tradi- 
tions of their line and brought disorder into the country, 
redeemed partly by Jayapida, who at the close of the eighth 
century revived Sanskrit learning by attracting famous scholars 
and poets to his court. But towards the close of his reign he 
became the tool of unscrupulous court officials, began to fleece 
his subjects unmercifully, and to victimise the Brahmans who 
dared to reprove him. Finally one of the 'twice-born,' Ittila, 
brought down the wrath of heaven upon the reckless monarch, 
and he died miserably, like Herod, eaten of worms. 

The character of lyalitapida, Jayapida's son and successor, 
is summed up by the Brahman historian of Kashmir in un- 
qualified terms. He was " the slave of his passions and did 
not attend to his regal duties ; the kingdom became the prey 
of courtesans and was defiled by immorality. He squandered 
the riches which his father, condemned to hell, had accumulated 
by wicked deeds, on buffoons, and the parasites who got a 
foothold in the royal palace initiated him into the arts of 
whoredom " {Raj., iv, 661-663). The climax was reached when 
Brihaspati, his son by a low-caste concubine, succeeded him. 
The government was seized by Brihaspati's maternal uncles, 
and " these low-born persons who knew no restraint in their 
actions " conspired together to put their nephew to death. 
They then put a puppet of the Karkota line upon the throne, ! 
and won popularity for themselves by patronage of religious 
foundations and a lavish distribution of their ill-gotten wealth, 
until the kingdom was torn to pieces by the quarrels of their Ij 
several factions. In the chaos which ensued the feeble remnant 
of the Karkota line was almost exterminated, while the descen- 
dants of Brihaspati's low-caste relatives increased their prestige. 
Thereupon a wise minister, Shura, one of the class of Damaras, 
272 



KASHMIR 

or feudal landlords, took the part of Avantivarman, a grandson 
of the eldest of Brihaspati's uncles, Utpala, and declared him 
a fit person to rule the kingdom. 

Avantivarman (a.d. 855-883) fully justified the minister's 
choice, for, after seating himself firmly on the throne with 
Shura's help, he restored peace and prosperity to Kashmir, 
causing learning, " whose flow had been interrupted, to descend 
again upon this land." The extant works of the scholars of 
his court occupy a prominent position in the Sanskrit literature 
of old Kashmir. 1 But Avantivarman's renown as a benefactor 
of Kashmir rests chiefly on the great engineering and irrigation 
works which he promoted through the skill of his able public 
works minister, Suyya, who no doubt was one of the master- 
builders versied in the Silpa-Sastras whose achievements in 
works of this kind had done so much for the material prosperity 
of India. Kashmir, says Kalhana, had been but little produc- 
tive before this time on account of the devastating floods from 
the overflowing of the Mahapadma I^ake. King lyalitaditya 
had done something to improve matters, but under the mis- 
government of his successors the country had reverted to its 
former condition, and by the constant flooding of the land the 
price of one khdri of rice had risen to ten hundred and fifty 
dmndras in times of famine, and two hundred in times of great 
abundance. Suyya, who by his religious merit, says Kalhana, 
achieved in a single birth the holy work which Vishnu accom- 
plished in four incarnations — ^the raising of the earth from the 
water — ^by the granting of land to worthy Brahmans, the build- 
ing of stone embankments to hold up the water, and the sub- 
jugation of the water-demon Kaliya, reduced the price of one 
khari to thirty-six dinnaras [Raj., v, 144-146). 

The methods by which this great work was achieved are 
summarised by Sir M. A. Stein as follows : " The systematic 
regulation of the course of the Vitasta, down to the rock- 
bound gorge where it leaves the valley, largely 1 educed the 
extent of the water-locked tracts along the banks of the river 
and the damage to the crops caused by floods. The construction 

^ Stein's Introduction to Rajatarangini, p. 98. 

s 273 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

of new beds for the river at points threatened by inundation- 
breaches was among the measures designed to effect the 
same object. The change thus made in the confluence of the 
Vitasta and its most important tributary, the Sindhu, can still 
be clearly traced, thanks to Kalhana's accurate topographical 
data. It shows alike the large scale and the systematic 
technical basis of Suj^a's regulation. The result of the latter 
was a great increase of land available for cultivation, and 
increased protection against disastrous floods, which in Kashmir 
have ever been the main causes of famine." (Introduct., p. 98.) 

Several terrible famines are recorded in Kalhana's chronicle : 
one of uncertain date, but before the beginning of the Karkota 
dynasty, in which the ripening autumn crops were ruined by 
a heavy fall of snow. In this case the king, Timjina, and his 
pious queen were unremitting in their efforts to succour their 
afflicted subjects. But in a.d. 917-918, when the crops were 
destroyed by floods, both the ministers and the soldiers 
(Tantrins) enriched themselves at the expense of the famine- 
stricken people, and the land became " like one great burial- 
ground." Again in 1099, when a similar calamity occurred, the 
profligate Harsha, so far from relieving the people's misery, 
" tormented them through the kdyasthas " ^ {Raj., vii, 1226). 

From the time of Avantivarman's death until the beginning 
of Mahmud of Ghazni's invasions in the eleventh century, page 
after page of the chronicles of Kashmir record only the bestiality 
and savagery of the low-born adventurers who misgoverned 
the country. There is, however, one interesting incident worth 
noticing which occurred about a.d. 939, when the commander- 
in-chief, Kamala-Vardhana, was in a position to seize the 
throne by force of arms. He hesitated to use the auspicious 
moment from a desire to obtain religious sanction for his 
claims beforehand and to win the intellectuals to his side by 
constitutional means. He called the Brahmans together and 
canvassed them in his desire for election to the throne. " Make 
a countryman of yours, strong and full-grown, king," said he 
{Raj., V, 458). Kalhana ridicules Kamala-Vardhana's na'iveU 

^ Revenue-collectors. 
274 



KASHMIR 

and ignorance of politics, and the contempt he pours upon the 
incompetence and vacillation of his caste-fellows in those days 
may have been deserved. But to the historian the interest 
lies, firstly, in the fact that in spite of the corruption and 
violence of the times an appeal was made to the traditional 
law of kingship instead of to force of arms ; and, secondly, 
in the unexpected result of the Assembly's vote, which was 
that Kamala-Vardhana's claims were set aside in favour of 
a Brahman candidate, Yashaskara, who was duly consecrated 
as king by the ancient Vedic rite of abhisheka and reigned for 
forty-seven years afterwards. 

The choice, moreover, proved to be a happy one for the 
country, Yashaskara, says Kalhana, " made the Krita Yuga 
come back again." He purified the administration so that 
" the officials who had plundered everything found no other 
occupation but to look after agriculture. . . . The Brahmans, 
devoted to their studies, did not carry arms. The Brahman 
gurus did not drink spirits as they sang their chants : the 
ascetics did not get children, wives, and crops. . . . Astrologer, 
doctor, councillor, teacher, minister, Purohita, ambassador, 
judge, clerk — none of them was then without learning " {Raj., v, 
8-13). But though generally a wise ruler he was not altogether 
free from the vices of his predecessors, and allowed himself to 
come under the control of a courtesan, lyalla, and by the close 
of his reign Kashmir was again plunged into disorder. 



275 



PART II 

THE MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST AND 
THE INDO-ARYAN RENAISSANCE 




an- 



Map of 

INDIA 

Under Mu HAM MADAN Rule 

To illustrate Part H 



Miles 




y, London. 




CapsirriqHt tJt'lni Murroy, London,. 



CHAPTER I 

MAHMUD OF GHAZNI 

THE preceding chapters have brought the history of 
Aryan rule in India down to the end of the tenth 
century, which saw Mahmud upon the throne of Ghazni 
and the beginning of Turkish domination in Islam. The glory 
of the Abbasid Khalifs had departed, for although the court of 
Baghdad kept up as much pomp and ceremony as in the days 
of Harun-al-Raschid, the Khalif was a tool in the hands of 
his Turkish bodyguard, and the richest provinces of the empire 
no longer acknowledged his political supremacy. The power 
of the sword, by which the Prophet sought to win converts to 
his teaching, was turned against Islam itself ; for though in 
matters of doctrine the Musalman might bow to the ruling of 
the Khalif, in the distribution of worldly goods, which his own 
good sword might win, he claimed the freedom of the true 
believer : the turbulent tribes of Central Asia, which Buddhism 
had hardly tamed, were enthusiastic converts to a creed which 
gave them unlimited scope for their predatory instincts. 

In the first centuries after the death of Muhammad there 
had not been wanting in Islam the strong and resolute leader- 
ship necessary to control the forces let loose by the subversion 
of the existing social order, and probably the stern patriarchal 
discipline imposed by the Arab rulers upon their followers was 
a more effective civilising influence for many converts to the 
Faith than the idealism of the Christian and Buddhist doctrine 
imperfectly taught and learnt. But when the control of a 
master-mind was wanting the inherent weakness of the social 
theories of Islam became apparent, and in the general scramble 
for political power the most unscrupulous and daring adventurer 
had the better chance of the prize. The history of Islam at 

279 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

this period, as it is written by its own historians, is solely 
occupied with the varied fortunes of these bold adventurers 
— many of them men of strong character and great ability — 
and of the dynasties they founded. 

The overpowering energy and enthusiasm with which Islam 
prosecuted its campaigns undoubtedly had a regenerating effect 
upon some of the old and effete civilisations it sought to uproot, 
and won it sympathy from many to whom its dogmatic teaching 
made no appeal. The Arab conquest had revived the national 
spirit of Persia, and the Persian converts from Zoroastrianism 
not only rivalled the Arabs in martial ardour, but contributed 
a rich store of their old Iranian culture to the treasury of Islam. 
Under the influence of Indian and Persian scholars the primitive 
philosophy of the Quran had been expanded into the mystical 
interpretations of the Sufi school, by which the poetry of Islam 
became a lyrical version of the Vedanta. After the fall of the 
Ommayad dynasty the Persians became the intellectual leaders 
of Islam in Asia, with the Arabs and Turks as their disciples. 

Before Mahmud of Ghazni came upon the scene, three semi- 
independent Persian dynasties — ^the Tahirid, Saffarid, and 
Samanid, had ruled over some of the richest provinces of 
Central Asia, owing only a nominal allegiance to the Khalifate 
of Baghdad. Under the dynasty of the Samanids — so called 
from a Persian nobleman, Saman, a convert from Zoroastrianism, 
whose descendants had established themselves as rulers in 
Transoxiania — Alptagin, a Turkish slave, had been promoted 
to the governorship of Khurasan by Abdul Mahk I (a.d. 954- 
961). On the death of the latter there was a dispute regarding 
the succession, and Alptagin, having supported the losing side, 
thought it safer for himself and his retainers to leave Eiiurasan. 
They accordingly made a raid toward the south and captured 
the stronghold of Ghazni, where he was able to defy the armies 
which Mansur, Abdul Malik's son and successor, sent against 
him. Sabuktagin, another Turkish slave, serving in Alptagin's 
body-guard, who through his ability had become commander- 
in-chief, succeeded to the throne of Ghazni in 975, and quickly 
added Kandahar to his dominions. He then began to harry 
280 



MAHMUD OF GHAZNI 

the 'infidels ' of India and replenisli his treasury by raids across 
the border. These incursions brought him into conflict with 
Jaipal, Raja of Lahore, who rashly marched up the Kabul 
valley to attack the brigands in their lair ; but his troops were 
badly equipped for mountain warfare, and suffering from the 
inclement climate were defeated by the hardy Turkish and 
other Central Asian horsemen. In this campaign Sabuktagin's 
son Mahmud, then only a boy of ten, is said by his biographer 
to have given "signal proofs of his valour and conduct."^ 

Mahmnd, though Sabuktagin's eldest son, did not obtain 
his father's throne without a struggle, for his claims were 
disputed by a younger brother, Ismail, on the ground of his 
illegitimate birth — ^Mahmud's mother having been a slave — 
a quarrel which has its humorous side, considering the ante- 
cedents of the father. The dispute having been settled in 
Mahmud's favour by the usual argument, Ismail was confined 
in a fortress until his death, and Mahmud ruled in Ghazni. 
Mahmud was then nearly thirty years of age, with a strong and 
well-made figure ; but his face was badly marked with the 
smallpox, and he is said to have complained that " nature had 
been so unkind to him that his appearance was positively 
forbidding." ^ 

According to the standards of their time, Muhammadans 
are no doubt justified in declaring that Mahmud " was en- 
dowed with all the qualities of a great prince and reflected 
lustre upon the faith." ^ He was a brilliant commander in the 
field, and as a dashing cavalry leader had no equal. According 
to Ferishta, his administration was so just that among his 
own turbulent subjects " the wolf and the lamb drank together 
at the same brook." But in Ghaznevide society ideas of 
justice did not comprehend much more than a fair distribution 
of the spoils of war among the spoilers ; and as Mahmud always 
had an unfailing supply of the indispensable material the tears 
of his subjects at his death were doubtless not unfeigned. 
Ferishta admits, however, that he had his weak points. First 

1 Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. i6. 

2 Ibid., p. 33. » Ibid., p. 32. 

281 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

in his conduct towards Firdausi, in cheating him of part of his 
promised reward ; and secondly in his exactions from his 
subjects in the latter part of his reign.^ Nor does the story 
his biographer tells of his treatment of a citizen of Nyshapur 
speak much for the great Sultan's sense of justice. Hearing 
that this worthy person was immensely rich, Mahmud sum- 
moned him to his presence and charged him with being an 
idolater and an apostate from the faith. The citizen replied that 
he was neither an idolater nor an apostate, but he was possessed 
of much wealth. The Sultan might take his money, but he 
should not rob him of his good name also. Mahmud agreed to 
this proposition, and having fleeced him of all his property 
gave him a certificate under the ro^^-al seal of the purity of 
his religious tenets ! ^ On the other hand, when his ruling 
passion was not touched, Ferishta gives us to understand that 
Mahmud was a man of his word and would deal even-handed 
justice even when his own near relatives were the transgressors. 
It must also be said that Mahmud's avarice was not the sordid 
greed of a miser. Like other great war-lords he had a strongly 
developed ' will to power,' and money, won by fair means or 
foul, was the way to power. 

Like Babur he was fond of laying out pleasure-gardens in 
the Persian and Indian fashion, and had such catholic tastes 
that he admired immensely the Hindu temples of Mathura, f 
and, to the disgust of his devout followers, refrained from 
destroying them completely — probably, as Ferishta says, 
because the labour of doing so would have been excessive, 
and because he had richer spoil in view. After his return 
from this expedition, laden with immense booty from the 
plundered temples, he followed the usual custom of employing 
the Indian craftsmen who were among his prisoners in making 
his own capital vie in splendour with the great cities of India 
he had despoiled. Thus the Great Mosque of Ghazni, known 
by the name of 'the Celestial Bride,' was built of marble and 
granite, furnished with rich carpets and with lamps and 

^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. 33. 
2 Ibid., p. 85. 
282 



MAHMUD OF GHAZNI 

candelabra of gold and silver. Near it Mahmud founded a 
university, and with the zeal of the modern opulent curio- 
hunter furnished it with " a vast collection of curious books 
in various languages," and established " a museum of natural 
curiosities," probably a zoological collection such as the Great 
Moguls were fond of, 

" When," says Ferishta, " the nobility of Ghazni perceived 
the taste of their king evince itself in architecture, they also 
endeavoured to vie with each other in the magnificence of 
their private palaces, as well as in public buildings which they 
raised for the embellishment of the city. Thus, in a short 
time, the capital was ornamented with mosques, porches, 
fountains, reservoirs, aqueducts, and cisterns, beyond any 
city in the East." Fergusson, the historian of Indian archi- 
tecture, with a singular lack of critical judgment, classifies the 
buildings made for Mahmud and his parvenu nobles as Pathan, 
and much exuberant rhetoric has been lavished on the artistic 
genius of the ' Pathan builders.' On the same principle, the 
Shah-ndma, the great epic of Mahmud's court poet, Firdausi, 
might be called * Pathan literature.' It may be conceded that 
Mahmud, Hke many of the meanest of his subjects, was apt in 
the improvisation of a Persian verse, and could argue theo- 
logical points with his mullas as ably as the ' Defender of the 
Faith ' in our own Tudor times. But there is no warrant for 
giving either Mahmud, or any of his promiscuous soldiery, 
credit for higher artistic or literary culture than other Turks, 
Tartars, or Pathans of his time possessed. 

Mahmud exploited the culture of India and Persia as sys- 
tematically and zealously as he plundered the temples of the 
' infidels ' ; but he had no constructive genius as a statesman 
nor profound religious convictions. He would have sacked 
Baghdad with as little compunction as he plundered Somnath, if 
the undertaking had seemed as profitable and as easy, for he 
did not hesitate to threaten the Khalif with death when the 
latter refused to give him Samarkand.^ Like every other 
successful Turki adventurer of obscure origin, he was anxious, 

^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. 53. 

283 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

for the prestige of liis dynasty, to pose as a descendant of 
ancient Persian kings, and his court poets, as was their 
duty, supplied him with a pedigree and extolled his victories 
over the idolater, while they sang the glorious deeds of the 
Achaemenian line. The inconsistency of associating the feats 
of the ' Asylum of Islam ' with those of the infidel fire- 
worshippers did not trouble M9,hmud's conscience until he was 
called upon to redeem his promise to pay for the great epic of 
his Poet Laureate. 

In like manner Persian and Indian builders embellished 
Mahmud's capital with " mosques, porches, fountains, reservoirs, 
aqueducts, and cisterns," so that the faithful might be bene- 
fited by the creative genius of the twin offspring of the ancient 
Aryan stock ; but the innate savagery of the Turk was not 
subdued, either then or in later times, by the thin veneer of 
culture which it borrowed from these and other sources. 

Madmud made in all seventeen plundering raids into India, 
the first in looi, when he defeated and took prisoner Jaipal, 
the Raja of lyahore, whom he had met before in battle when 
he was serving under his father, Sabuktagin. The rich spoil 
gathered in this expedition encouraged Mahmud to repeat the 
adventure in the following year, with such success that the 
looting of the idolaters' temples became thereafter almost an 
annual State function and the main source of Mahmud's 
revenue. The accounts of these expeditions are derived almost 
entirely from Muhammadan sources, and we need not believe 
that they were all of the nature of triumphal progresses, though 
their main object, that of loot, was comparatively easy to attain 
with the large force of well-mounted cavalry which Mahmud 
skilfully led. The Sultan of Ghazni had the advantage of 
' inner lines ' and could direct his attack at unexpected points, 
before the numerous Hindu states opposed to him had time to 
settle their own differences and organise an effective defence. 
In the pitched battles he fought Mahmud repeated the tactics 
of Alexander the Great, and by a skilful use of his cavalry 
and archers made the unwieldy war-elephants of the Indians 
a potent weapon in his own^^hands. 
284 



MAHMUD OF GHAZNI 

The whole series of marauding expeditions was, moreover, 
organised with great military foresight. Having made his 
capital secure by the conquest of the Hindu kingdoms in the 
upper valley of the Indus, Mahmud turned his arms against 
the Arabs in the northern part of Sind, which was then divided 
into two provinces with their respective capitals at Multan 
and Mansura. The Amirs of Sind were independent of the 
Khalifate of Baghdad. Multan had, it is said, paid tribute to 
Sabuktagin, but had subsequently renounced the suzerainty 
of Ghazni : Mahmud, by suddenly appearing before the city 
in loio, not only forced the Amir, Abul Fath Daud, to pay a 
heavy contribution to the Ghazni treasury, but secured an 
invaluable base for his subsequent expeditions. Thus, though 
Mahmud always preferred the hills of Afghanistan to the 
plains of India for his headquarters, he was in a position four 
years later to venture an attack upon Thaneshar, which 
promised rich booty, for it was held in the same veneration 
by the idolaters as Mecca by the faithful. ^ 

The news of the approach of the Musalman army roused all 
the neighbouring Hindu states to combine for the defence of 
the sacred city, but before they had time to do so Mahmud 
had swooped down upon its temples, plundered them of their 
gold and silver images and the vast wealth of their treasuries, 
and returned to Ghazni with 200,000 captives to fill the harems 
of the faithful and furnish forced labour for the Sultan's public 
works. Mahmud'scapital thereafter, says Ferishta, " appeared 
like an Indian city, no soldier of the camp being without 
wealth, or without many slaves." It was after this successful 
foray that Mahmud sent a letter to the Khalif , Al Kadir Billa- 
Abassy, requesting that his governors should surrender to him 
that part of Khurasan which still remained subject to Baghdad. 
Finding the Khalif complacent he followed it up with a peremp- 
tory demand for the cession of Samarkand, supplementing this 
with a threat that in case of refusal he would march to Baghdad, 
put the IChalif to death and bring his ashes to Ghazni. This 
was too much, even for the weak successor of Harun-al-Raschid, 
^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. 50. 

285 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and the laconic but spirited reply which he sent had the 
effect of " preventing Mahmud from again urging the 
request." 

Possibly the disastrous issue of his campaign in 1015, when 
he tried to penetrate into the valley of Kashmir, sobered the 
royal freebooter for a time. He failed in his attempt to storm 
the fortress of Lohara, and on its homeward march his army, 
being misled by guides, fell into extensive morasses and many 
of his troops perished. But three years later he collected an 
army of 100,000 Turki and Afghan horsemen, and 20,000 foot, 
and set out with still richer loot in view — ^Mathura, the sacred 
city of Krishna, and proud Kanauj, which "raised its head to 
the skies and which in strength and beauty might boast of 
being unrivalled." This daring project involved a three 
months' march from Ghazni, and there were seven formidable 
rivers to be crossed, but Mahmtid's skilful strategy was equal 
to the occasion. He had prepared for the expedition carefulty 
by sending spies to survey the country,^ and he found efficient 
guides among the Indians serving in his army. In order to 
conceal his real objective he marched along the foot of the 
Himalayas until the Jumna was reached, and crossing it 
captured the fort of Baran, the modern Bulandshahr. Then 
pushing rapidly southward he appeared before the gates of 
Mathura, and having forced his way into the city with very 
little difficulty he gave it over to plunder, rapine, and 
massacre. 

A vast quantity of gold, silver, and priceless gems was found 
in the temple treasuries, besides numbers of gold and silver 
images, which were broken up for the sake of the precious 
metal. The magnificence of the buildings, constructed of fine 
masonry and riveted with iron, excited Mahmtid's admiration, 
especially the principal temple in the middle of the city, re- 
garding which he wrote to the governor of Ghazni : " If any 
should wish to construct a building equal to this, he would not 
be able to do it without expending an hundred thousand 
thousand red dinars, and it would occupy two hundred years, 

^ Tdnkh Yamml, Elliot's History of India, vol. ii, p. 41. 
286 



MAHMUD OF GHAZNI 

even though the most experienced and able workmen were 
employed." ^ 

Mahmud did not tarry at Mathura, but after giving orders for 
the temples to be burned with naphtha and fire, he pushed on 
with a picked force to Kanauj. The Raja Rajya-pala re- 
treated across the Ganges on his approach, and the great city 
with its ancient temples shared the fate of Mathura, the in- 
habitants who did not escape being massacred or taken to 
Ghazni to be sold as slaves. The account of the rest of the 
expedition is somewhat difficult to follow ; but after capturing 
several hill-forts and penetrating into Bundelkhand, where he 
defeated and killed a great Rajput chieftain, Chandra-pal, 
Mahmud returned in triumph to his capital with spoil in gold, 
silver, and gems beyond the dreams of avarice, and so many slaves 
that Ghazni became a market for merchants from distant cities 
and " the countries of Mawarau-n nahr [Turkistan], 'Irak, and 
Khurasan were filled with them, and the fair and the dark, the 
rich and the poor were commingled in one common slavery." ^ 

The crowning exploit of Mahmud's career was the plunder 
of the great Saiva temple of Somnath, on the seashore at the 
extreme south of the Surashtra (Kathiawar) peninsula. The 
coast-line there is crescent-shaped, like Siva's bow, and the 
temple, facing the setting sun, was dedicated to Soma, the 
ancient Vedic deity representing Siva as the Moon-I^ord. 
The name Surashtra also connected the city with ancient Vedic 
ritual. The considerations which prompted Mahmud to this 
adventure were probably two : first, that the field for profit- 
able looting in other directions had been well exploited, and 
second, that an attack in that quarter would be the least 
expected by the infidels. No doubt he had obtained from his 
Indian spies accurate information of the fabulous wealth 
deposited in the temple, and the difficulties and dangers of the 
route only roused the adventurous spirit of his faithful followers. 

So, invoking the aid of the Almighty, as all good bandits do, 
he set out in the autumn of 1025 with 30,000 horse. The route 

^ Tdrikh Yammi, Elliot's History of India, vol. ii, p. 44. 
^ Ibid., p. 50. 

287 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

lay through the Musalman province of Sind, which was to a 
large extent under Mahmud's control. At Multan he collected 
30,000 camels with water and provisions for crossing the desert 
which lay between him and the fertile province of Surashtra. 
He met with very little opposition until he reached Dabalwarah, 
two days' march from Somnath. " The people of this place 
stayed resolutely in it, believing that Somnath would utter his 
prohibition and drive back the invaders ; but Mahmud took 
the place, slew the men, plundered their property, and marched 
on to Somnath." ^ 

The great temple, enclosed by a strong fortress, was built 
upon the seashore, and washed by the waves at every recurring 
tide, so that the ocean itself joined in worship at the shrine of 
the Moon-Iyord, Siva. A thousand Brahmans performed the 
daily service of this temple, and the daughters of the royal 
houses of India, it is said, danced the dance of the cosmic 
rh5rthm in front of Siva's shrine to the time-beat of the waves. 
When Mahmud's army approached, the Hindu defenders hurled 
defiance at the Musalmans, telling them that Mahadeva would 
destroy them to the last man. But after a desperate assault 
lasting two days, Mahmud's troops carried the outer defences 
and drove the Hindus through the city to the entrance of the 
great temple. A dreadful slaughter ensued. " Band after 
band of the defenders entered the temple to Somnath, and with 
their hands clasped round their necks wept and passionately 
entreated him. Then again they issued forth to fight until 
they were slain and but few were left alive. These took 
to the sea in boats to make their escape, but the Musalmans 
overtook them, and some were killed and some were drowned." ^ 
Over fifty thousand Hindus perished in tne assault and sub- 
sequent massacre. Mahmud, it is said, obtained so much loot 
that no other king possessed anything equal to it. Somnath was 
endowed with the revenue of more than ten thousand villages, 
and its treasury contained the pious offerings of centuries. 
The chains of the temple bells were of gold, weighing 200 mans. 

* Kamilu-t Tawdrzkh of Ibn Asir, Elliot's History of India, vol. ii, p. 470. 
2 Ibid., pp. 470-471. 
288 



MAHMUD OF GHAZNI 

There were canopies for the temple processions set with pearls 
and precious stones, and exquisitely jewelled lamps for lighting 
the shrine which contained the lingam, Siva's symbol, also set 
with gems of immense value. All of this, exceeding in value 
two millions of dinars, was carried off to Ghazni, and to com- 
plete the humiliation of the infidel the great stone lingam was 
also removed to serve as a doorstep for the mosque of ' the 
Celestial Bride.' 

On his return march Mahmud encountered a Rajput chieftain, 
who ineffectually tried to bar his passage, and met with serious 
difficulties in recrossing the desert owing to the treachery of 
a guide. According to one account he reduced to submission 
the lower province of Sind, with its capital Mansura, the ruler 
of which was an apostate from Islam. He then returned to 
Ghazni through Multan, 

Mahmud did not long survive this grand coup. He died in 
1030 at the age of sixty-three, after a reign of thirty-five years, 
and was buried, says Ferishta, with great pomp and solemnity 
at Ghazni, At his death the Panjab, Sind, and jjarts of the 
adjoining provinces acknowledged his suzerainty. Though he 
did not effect any permanent conquests in India, he opened the 
gates wide for his co-religionists. The almost invariable success 
of his arms added immensely to his prestige and brought Islam 
many adherents among the uncultured warlike clans of the 
north-west provinces of India, to whom fighting was a religion 
and victory in the field the highest proof of divine inspiration. 
Mahmud was no bigot, and in his eyes the sinfulness of idolatry 
only called for the chastisement of the sword when it was 
accompanied by much portable property. In politics he was 
a realist of the modern type — the Khalif was no more to him 
than a Hindu raja, and he was as successful in turning the 
mutual jealousies of Hindu states to his advantage as he was 
in plundering their temples and in squeezing the wealth of his 
own Musalman subjects. 



289 



CHAPTER II 

THE AFGHAN AND TURKISH 
SULTANS OF DELHI 

FOR about a century and a half after Mahmnd's death 
there was a pause in the triumphant progress of Islam in 
India. In 1033 famine followed by a devastating plague 
raged all over Mesopotamia, Persia, and parts of India, where, 
says Ferishta, whole districts were entirely depopulated. The 
Ghaznevide Empire was soon brought into chaos by the usual 
disputes for the succession by the rival candidates, which, 
according to the recognised law of Islam, were settled on the 
principle that " dominion belongs to the longest sword." ^ 
Fresh hordes of Turks from Central Asia profited by the oppor- 
tunity to claim their place in the sun. The Hindus in the 
Panjab also rose in revolt, and in 1043 the Raja of Delhi, in 
alliance with other Rajput princes, recaptured Hanzi, Thane- 
shar, and Nagarkot, which were garrisoned by Musalmans. 
They failed, however, in an attack upon Lahore, and most of 
the rest of Mahmud's Indian feudatories remained firm in 
allegiance to the Ghaznevide Sultans, who from time to time 
made Lahore their capital, but were too much occupied in 
holding their Turkish enemies at bay to attempt to enlarge 
their Indian possessions. 

The end of Ghazni and its dynasty was a fitting climax 
to the record of bloodshed, inhumanity, a d self-indulgence 
which made its history. About the middle of the twelfth 
century the Afghans made themselves an independent princi- 
pality at Ghtir, a mountain fortress between Ghazni and Herat. 
In 1 152 their chieftain, 'Ala-ud-din Hasan, incensed at the 
torture and execution of his brother by the Sultan B air am, 

^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. 98. 
290 



THE SULTANS OF DELHI 

advanced against Ghazni, and after a furious battle captured 
the city and gave it up to " flame, slaughter, and devastation." 
" The massacre which followed," says Ferishta, " continued for 
a space of seven days, in which pity seemed to have fled from 
the earth and the fiery spirits of demons to actuate men." 
'Ala-ud-din, insatiable of revenge, carried away a number of 
the Sultan's adherents in chains to his native city, where they 
were slaughtered and the earth mixed with their blood was 
plastered on the walls. The Sultan himself died soon after- 
wards at Lahore, where he had taken refuge with the remnants 
of his army, but in 1186 Muhammad Ghuii, or Shihab-ud-din, 
'Ala-ud-din's cousin, captured the city, so that the last remnant 
of the Ghaznevide Empire, which included Kabul as well as 
the Panjab and part of Sind, passed into the possession of the 
Ghuri line. 

The first of the Afghan Sultans, Shihab-ud-din Muhammad 
ibn Sam — ^to give him his full title — in accordance with court 
etiquette was provided with a pedigree going back to some 
apocryphal Persian kings. He acted for several years as com- 
mander-in-chief for his brother Ghiyas-ud-din, 'Ala-ud-din's 
successor, and in that capacity conducted his first Indian 
campaign. In 1191 he met with a disastrous defeat near 
Thaneshar from Prithivi-raja, the Raja of Delhi, and only 
escaped capture through the courage of a faithful servant who 
carried him off the field fainting from his wounds. The Afghan 
retired to his native stronghold, Ghur, in a furious mood, and 
visited with his wrath some of his officers who returned with 
the remnants of his army by putting them in prison, having 
first compelled them to walk round the city with horses' nose- 
bags tied round their necks munching corn. Then as soon as 
he had recovered from his wounds he mustered a new army of 
120,000 chosen Turki and Afghan horsemen and marched into 
India, determined to recover his lost honour from the infidels 
or die in the attempt. 

Prithivi-raja, who, with his brother-in-law Samarsi, Raja of 
Chitor, and other great Rajput princes, prepared to meet the 
barbarian with equal resolution, was of the purest Rajput 

291 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

blood, being the chieftain of the Chauhan or Sessodia clansmen, 
who claimed descent from Rama and the Suryavamsa of 
Ajodhya. B}^ virtue of his military prowess and noble lineage 
Prithivi-raja was recognised as the premier Rajput of Rajasthan. 
Ajmir for a long time had been the Chauhan capital, but in the 
middle of the twelfth century one of Prithivi-raja's ancestors 
had captured Delhi, one of the several cities which had risen 
and fallen, in successive ages, near the scene of the historic 
struggle between the Kauravas and Pandavas. There had been 
a long-standing feud between the Gahawar clan, whose chief- 
tains then ruled at Kanauj, and the Chauhans of Delhi, accen- 
tuated by the elopement of Prithivi-raja with a Gahawar 
princess. This romantic incident,^ which was quite in accord- 
ance with Kshatriya marriage traditions, was used by the 
Delhi court poet, Chand Bardai, to explain the disasters which 
overtook the Rajput arms, for Prithivi-raja's attachment to 
his bride is said to have caused a fatal delay in the preparations 
for meeting Shihab-ud-din's attack. The Raja of Kanauj, 
who lowered the standard of Rajput chivalry by employing 
Turki horsemen in his army,^ is also said to have intrigued 
with the common enem3^ There is no inherent improbability 
in the former statement, for in earlier times Hindu kings often 
had a bodyguard of Yavanas, or Asiatic Greeks, and, on the 
other hand, success in war brought many Hindu recruits to 
the armies of Islam. Ferishta states that a considerable 
body of Hindu cavalry, under the command of a Rajput 

^ Jaichand, the Raja of Kanauj, had chosen one of the numerous suitors for 
his daughter's hand, but as a formality had arranged the traditional Kshatriya 
ceremony of Swayamvara, the bride's own choice. Prithivi-raja, in spite of 
the deadly feud which existed between the two hoiises, received an invitation 
like the rest of the Rajput princes, but on account of the intentional arrogance 
of his letter Jaichand did not dream that the Chauhan would appear. In 
derision he put up a statue of him as the doorkeeper of the tournament. The 
princess, who was secretly in love with Pritliivi-raja, passed by all the throng 
of princes and threw the bridal garland over the neck of the statue. At the 
same moment the Chauhan Raja with a few chosen retainers dashed into the 
arena, and in the confusion which ensued carried off the bride under the eyes 
of the infuriated father, in spite of the desperate efforts of the Kanauj warriors 
to prevent them. 

* Tod, Annals of Rajast'han, vol. i, p. 256. 
292 



PRITHIVI-RAJA 

chieftain, Siwand Rai, served in the armies of MahmUd of 
Ghazni.i 

Though internal dissensions no doubt contributed to the final 
catastrophe, the immediate causes of the defeat of the Hindu 
forces were the resourcefulness of the Turkish leaders in counter- 
ing the traditional tactics of Rajput warfare and the irresistible 
dash of the hardy Central Asian horsemen. When Shihab- 
ud-din had reached Peshawar he was prevailed upon to order 
the release of the officers he had imprisoned and to make amends 
for the indignities he had inflicted on them by presenting them 
with robes of honour and reinstating them in the army. Then, 
following Mahmud's usual practice, he spent some time at 
Multan in organising his forces, and finally advanced throt^h 
the Panjab towards Delhi. Prithivi-raja, joined by a number 
of Rajput princes, met the Musalman army near Thaneshar 
in the field where he had previously been victorious, but after 
a desperate conflict lasting from sunrise to sunset Shihab-ud- 
din broke the Hindu ranks by a furious charge of his Turki 
horsemen, and the flower of Rajput chivalry perished in a vain 
attempt to retrieve the fortunes of the day. Prithivi-raja 
himself was taken prisoner and put to death. Ajmir, the 
Chauhan Raja's ancestral city, fell into Shihab-ud-din's hands 
and suffered the usual fate of pillage and massacre. Delhi 
resisted longer, but was captured the next year (1193) by 
Qutb-ud-din, one of Shihab-ud-din's lieutenants, formerly a 
slave, who was installed in Ajmir as governor. 

A year later Shihab-ud-din followed up his victories by the 
capture of Kanauj, after a pitched battle in which the Raja 
Jaichand was killed by an arrow shot by Qutb-ud-din, who 
was an expert bowman. With the destruction of this famous 
fortress-city the way to the lower Ganges valley lay open. 
Benares was next plundered and burnt, and its thousand 
temples defiled and ruined by the ruthless barbarians in the 
name of the One True God. At the same time a body of 
horsemen sent by Qutb-ud-din, under the command of Muham- 
mad ibn Bakhtiyar, sacked and burnt the monasteries of 
1 Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. 94. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Bihar, massacred the monks, and drove the raja, Lakhsman 
Sen, from his capital at Nudiah. 

Shihab-ud-din after the capture of Kanauj returned to 
Ghazni laden with spoil, where on his brother's death he was 
crowned as Sultan. He was assassinated in 1206, and from 
that time Qutb-ud-din, who was one of the Turkish slaves to 
whom the lav/ of Islam gave unlimited opportunities as war- 
lords, ruled as an independent sovereign at Delhi. He and 
his successors gradually extended their power over the plains 
of Aryavarta, though the Rajput chieftains in their hill-fortresses 
continued heroically to defend themselves against overwhelming 
odds. Chitor held out until 1303, when 'Ala-ud-din threw all 
the strength of his empire against it. Then after a long siege, 
when further resistance was hopeless, all the Rajput women 
to save their honour threw themselves into a colossal fimeral 
pyre lighted within the subterranean vaults of the palace, 
while the warriors clad in saffron robes of sacrifice rushed 
sword in hand against the serried ranks of the besiegers. The 
few who cut their way through found a refuge in the fastnesses 
of the Aravali hills. But Chitor did not remain permanently 
in the hands of the Musalman until it was captured by Akbar 
in 1568, and the Rajputs kept up a resistance until the 
last days of the Mogul Empire, though Akbar succeeded in 
winning some of the chieftains to his side. The part the 
latter played in the building up of that empire will be told 
later on. 

The noble monuments such as the Qutb Minar and the old 
mosques at Delhi, the tomb of Altamsh and his mosque at 
Ajmir, known as the Arhai-din-ka Jhompra, when taken from 
their historical context and placed in a compartment by 
themselves as examples of the ' old Pathan style,' according 
to Fergusson's arbitrary classification, give a totally false im- 
pression of the character and culture of these Turkish or Pathan 
rulers and of the history of their times. Fergusson in his 
admiration for these monuments shut his eyes to the fact that 
they actually and positively represent a new link in the chain 
of Indo-Aryan culture which stretches from the remotest 
294 



'PATHAN' ARCHITECTURE 

antiquity down to our own times, and only fortuitously and 
incidentally are related to the initiative of the Turkish f reedmen 
for whose glorification they were designed and built by Hindu 
craftsmen. These Turkish or Pathan monarchs were no better 
and no worse than might be expected of men who, in a time 
when the doctrine of ' frightfulness ' in war was preached and 
practised with such conspicuous success, rose by their own 
energy, determination, and courage from the lowest estate to 
the highest, and without any traditions of culture behind them 
were set to rule over great empires. 

It is to their credit that they did not attempt to root out 
utterly the culture of the higlil3^ civilised Indo-Aryan races 
whom they ruled with a rod of iron. They used it to increase 
their own comfort and glory in much the same way as the 
parvenu millionaire of modern times surrounds himself with all 
the luxury and artistic treasures which money can provide. 
Naturally, by compelling Hindu craftsmen to conform to the 
law and ritual of Islam, they forced the traditions of Indo- 
Aryan art into new channels and thus unconsciously gave them 
a new impetus. But the personal note which they, and the 
ferocious rough-riders of Central Asia who formed their nobility, 
gave to Indian art was limited to one idea — ^they insisted that 
their buildings should be the biggest things on earth. This 
so-called ' Pathan ' art was saved from the vulgarity of the 
modern plutocrat by the fact that the Turkish or Tartar tyrants 
had at their command an unlimited supply of the finest^artistry 
of the world, at a time when its creative power was fully 
developed and had not been reduced to a mechanical formula 
by modern machinery and archaeological pedantry. The 
admiration which these great works justly excite should not 
prevent us from seeing that both in spirit and in substance 
their art is purely Indian and neither Turkish nor Pathan, and 
that their craftsmen were brothers of those who in the same 
epoch built the palaces of Chitor and the magnificent Towers 
of Victory with which the Ranas of Mewar commemorated 
the triumphs of Rajput chivalry.^ 

1 Of the two Towers of Victory now existing at Chitor, the earliest belongs 

295 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

The archaeological method of writing history starts with the 
premiss that the Indian master-builders who created these 
noble monuments were so dull-witted and pedantic that they 
needed the inspiration of Turks, Pathans, or Persians or Arabs 
to put a stone at an angle instead of horizontally when technical 
conditions made it expedient to do so. The pointed arches 
built in this fashion and ornamented with texts from the Quran 
instead of idolatrous Hindu symbols are therefore taken as 
incontestable evidence of the architectural genius of Islam. 
The proselytising swordsmen of the Prophet would have scorned 
to claim the merit which modern dilettanti thrust upon them. 
Their interests were in the battlefield, in the chase, and in an 
adventurous open-air life. The glory of Islam demanded that 
its militant apostles should appropriate to themselves all the 
symbols of earthly power and the comforts which it brought 
them. But they left the arts of peace — except that of the 
scribe, which was necessary for the right interpretation of the 
law of Islam — ^to the infidel. Saracenic culture was therefore 
purely literary. No Turk or Tartar or Mongol once enlisted 
under the banner of Islam would deign to plough the field or 
glorify God by the peaceful labour of his hands. The way 
to riches and to Paradise lay in spoiling the infidel and 
dying on the battlefield. Saracenic craftsmanship was the 
culture of the races which were forced under the Musalman 
yoke. Such terms as Saracenic or Pathan applied to Indo- 
Muhammadan architecture are historically unscientific because 
of the implication that the creative impulse came from out- 
side India ; whereas, except for some of the decorative 
motives where the influence of the foreign Musalman scribe 
and painter can be seen, Indo-Muhammadan architecture 
is purely Indian. Hindu builders joined the ranks of the 
' true believer ' to escape the poll-tax and the social stigma 
from which they suffered as Hindus ; but their foreign 
rulers left them to work out their own ideas of planning and 

to the eleventh or twelfth century, and the later one, which may rank as 
one of the finest towers in the world, to the reign of Kumbha Rana, 1428- 
1468. 

296 



TURKS AND PATHANS 

of structure, provided they did not offend against the law of 
Islam. 1 

It would be outside the scope of this work to give a complete 
account of the successive conquests of the early Musalman 
dynasties and of their provincial governors, who were always 
fighting for their own hand, and one after another set themselves 
up as independent rulers in Aryavarta. So long as these 
Turkish or Pathan Sultans and their deputies revelled in an 
adventurous open-air life which involved strenuous physical 
exercise and some mental exertion, their despotic rule was 
characterised by a certain primitive sense of honour and justice 
which is extravagantly extolled by Muhammadan writers. 
But though some of these slave kings had qualities which made 
them admirable tribal chieftains, none had the culture or the 
moral stamina to qualify them as rulers of a highly civilised 
race with a religion different from their own. Many of them 
were despots of the worst type, who relapsed into hopeless 
debauchery and cruelty. The system which put political power 
into the hands of the slaves who formed the imperial body- 
guard left the succession to the throne always insecure, made 
the court a hotbed of intrigue, and favoured the grossest 
corruption and tyranny in the administration. Some of the 
Sultans won a vicarious fame as patrons of great poets, Persian 
or Indian, but these dilettanti monarchs very rarely had great 
intellectual gifts of their own such as distinguished the highly 
cultured Aryan dynasties of India. 

The Turk as a shepherd in his native pastures had a reputa- 
tion for stupidity of which he was extremely sensitive when 
conversion to Islam made him a military aristocrat and an 
irresponsible ruler. Some tried to remove the reproach by 
establishing a fictitious Persian pedigree and by bestowing 
patronage upon Persian or Indian poets, but, except in the eyes 
of their own courtiers, the Turki sovereigns of India were neither 
statesmen, scholars, nor artists. The Pathans, who claimed 

1 The evolution of Indo-Muhammadan architecture is explained more fidly 
in the author's Indian Architecture : its Psychology, Structure, and History 
(Murray, 1913). 

297 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Jewish ancestry, lacked the essential quality of a ruling race — 
capacity for self-government. They despised handicrafts and 
any occupation except agriculture and warfare. Fergusson's 
comment on the screen of Qutb-ud-din's mosque at Delhi, that 
" the Afghan conquerors had a tolerably distinct idea that 
pointed arches were the true form for architectural openings," 
is hopelessly wide of the mark, whether applied to Turks or 
Pathans. 

In the administration of their vast Indian territories these 
early Muhammadan Siiltans found it expedient to utilise for 
the benefit of Islam the ancient Indo-Aryan administrative 
machinery, though the ethical and religious principles upon 
which it was based were entirely foreign to their minds. Even 
under the best conditions the application of Indo-Aryan 
methods of government by Turkish or Pathan rulers led to 
grave abuses. The village communities, deprived of their 
traditional rights as owners of the soil, were at the mercy of 
the Sultan's Musalman officials, or of low Brahman agents 
appointed to collect the imperial revenue, who were not always 
above the temptation of extorting money from their own 
people, while they would naturally regard it as a pious duty to 
deceive their Mlechchha employers. 

The assessment of taxes due to the imperial treasury, which 
formerly had been regulated by traditional law and custom, 
was now fixed arbitrarily by the caprice of a despotic ruler and 
his unscrupulous officers, for whom infidels only existed that 
they might minister to the needs of the faithful. The crowds 
of foreign adventurers who thronged the imperial and pro- 
vincial capitals were supported solely by grants of land or 
allowances from the imperial treasury, while they contributed 
nothing by their industry or science to the general welfare of 
the State. The endowment of learning and piety which under 
Hindu rule had been bestowed impartially upon all recognised 
religious sects, either at the free will of the popular assemblies 
or from the sovereign's personal estate, was now limited to 
the propagation of the teachinj^- of Islam at the expense of the 
whole community, while all forms of religious belief outside 
298 



DELHI AND GAUR 

Islamic dogma were penalised by heavy exactions and limitless 
means of oppression. 

The chief events in the history of the Muhammadan conquest 
of Northern India by Qutb-ud-din and his immediate succes- 
sors may be briefly summarised. Qutb-ud-din's victories and 
Muhammad ibn Bakhtiyar's occupation of Bihar and Bengal 
practically made two Musalman kingdoms, one having its 
capital at Delhi and the other at Lakhnauti or Gaur, though the 
province of Gaur generally acknowledged the suzerainty of the 
Delhi Sultan. Ibn Bakhtiyar attempted to add Tibet and 
KamarQpa, the modern province of Assam, to his conquests, but 
meeting with stronger opposition than he expected he turned 
back, only to find his retreat cut off by the Raja of KamarHpa's 
troops. His force was nearly annihilated, and he himself 
narrowly escaped with his life. Defeat to these fire-eating 
swashbucklers was worse than a crime. He died of grief 
shortly afterwards, and none of his successors ever attempted 
to repeat his hazardous enterprise. 

Altamsh, Qutb-ud-din's son-in-law and successor, in 1231 
captured the fortress of Gwalior, and soon afterwards the capital 
of Malwa, the famous city of Ujjain, destroying a great 
temple, dedicated to Mahakali, which rivalled Sonmath in 
magnificence. In 13 10 the whole province fell into Musalman 
hands, and was ruled by governors appointed from Delhi until 
the beginning of the fifteenth century, when it became an 
independent Musalman state with its capital at Mandu. 
Altamsh's son and successor, Rukn-ud-din, was a debauchee, 
and soon made way for his capable sister, the Sultana Razia 
Begam, who had frequently acted as regent in her father's 
lifetime, and possessed many of the qualities of a good Musal- 
man, including that of reading the Quran with correct pro- 
nunciation.^ She, however, offended the Turki faction at her 
court by her intimacy with an Abyssinian slave whom she 
made commander-in-chief, and after a short reign she was put 
to death by her brother Bairam in 1239. 

At the close of the thirteenth century Qutb-ud-din's dynasty 

^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. ii, p. 217. 

299 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

was brought to an end by the weakness and debauchery of 
Kai-Kubad M'uizz-ud-din. One of his generals, Jalal-ud-din, 
the leader of the Khilji clan, having disposed of his dying 
master, seized the throne in 1288, but after a reign of seven 
years was himself treacherously murdered by his nephew 
'Ala-ud-din, the second of the Khilji dynasty. The Khiljis 
were Turks, like their predecessors, but of a different tribe. 
'Ala-ud-din' s chief exploit was a daring raid which he undertook 
on his own responsibility during his uncle's reign. Up to this 
time the Musalman conquests had been confined to Aryavarta, 
or Hindustan proper — the land lying north of the Vindhya 
range. The Indo- Aryan kingdoms of the Dekhan and Southern 
India had been fully occupied with their own quarrels, and, 
being accustomed for many centuries to consider themselves 
as having no part in the political affairs of Northern India, 
had looked on unconcerned while the armies of Islam plundered 
and ravaged the holy places of Aryavarta. 

'Ala-ud-din, young and adventurous, longed to explore the 
country as yet unkonwn to the Musalman marauders, which 
promised richer spoil than he had yet obtained from the 
impoverished infidels near at hand. Jalal-ud-din was fond of 
his impetuous nephew and had made him governor of the 
province of Oudh. The position by no means satisfied 'Ala-ud- 
din's thirst for adventure, so having heard of a flourishing city 
named Deoghur (the modern Daulatabad), then the capital of 
Maharashtra, lying seven hundred miles to the south, he left 
his headquarters at Karra with a body of eight thousand horse 
and, spreading abroad the rumour that he had quarrelled with 
the Sultan of Delhi and was about to take service with a raja 
in the south, he marched through Bundelkhand unopposed, 
drawing supplies from the prosperous Hindu villages through 
which he passed. He then pushed on through Malwa, using 
alternately the Delhi Sultan's prestige and the plausible tale 
of his quarrel with him to secure support from the Musalman 
authorities and to disarm the suspicion of the Hindu, When 
at last, having crossed the Vindhyas and the Narbada river, 
'Ala-ud-din appeared before Deoghur, the Raja Ram Deva 
300 



'ALA-UD-DIN 

was totally unprepared to meet his attack, for no Musalman 
army had yet penetrated so far. The city was plundered of 
all its wealth, and the Raja, who had retired to his adjoining 
hill-fortress, was glad to save himself from a dangerous position 
by a heavy payment of gold and jewels and the promise of a 
yearly tribute to the Sultan. 

When 'Ala-ud-din got safely back to Karra after a year's 
absence, with numerous elephants and an immense booty, 
there was great rejoicing at the Delhi court at the prospect 
of a splendid contribution to the imperial treasury, for "the 
guileless heart of the Sultan " relied on the fidelity of his nephew. 
He was soon undeceived, for 'Ala-ud-din had not the least 
intention of parting with his plunder. When the unsuspecting 
Sultan came to take over the spoil, he was cut down by followers 
of 'Ala-ud-din while the latter was pretending to do him homage. 
The imperial canopy was immediately brought and raised over 
the chief assassin's head, and 'Ala-ud-din's succession to the 
throne of Delhi was made secure by the murder of Jalal-ud- 
din's two sons and some of his partisans, and by the lavish 
distribution of largesse from the imperial treasury.^ 

The atrocities which 'Ala-ud-din perpetrated as Sultan even 
surpassed his villainous conduct as a subject. Yet he was 
altogether a very interesting historical figure, and in his reign 
of twenty years there are many parallels with the events of 
our own time. His ideals were those of a Prussian war-lord. 
" I do not know whether this is lawful or unlawful," he an- 
swered to the arguments of the learned doctors of Islam ; 
" whatever I think to be for the good of the State, or suitable 
for the emergency, that I decree." ^ This new religion and 
KuUur, upon which he invoked the blessings of God and of 
His Prophet in proper form, he would bring all men to adopt 
by his sword and by the mighty war-machine which he con- 
trived. All statesmanship was summed up in the efficiency of 
the war-machine, and in the subordination of all other human 
interests to its perfection. His methods of promoting it were 

^ Tdnkh-i Firoz Shdhi, Elliot's History oj India, vol. iii, p. 151. 
2 Ibid., p. 188. 

301 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

drastic and thoroughly scientific. The whole of his subjects, 
Musalman as well as Hindu, were to be disciplined into implicit 
obedience as a means of promoting perfect discipUne in the 
army. The first steps were to bring back under imperial 
control all proprietary rights, free gifts, and religious endow- 
ments granted by his predecessors. All pensions, grants of 
land, and endowments in the country were appropriated — 
" the people were pressed and amerced, money was exacted 
from them on every kind of pretence." ^ No one could stir 
without the Sultan's knowledge, and " whatever happened in 
the houses of nobles, great men, and ofiicials was commtmicated 
to the Sultan by his reporters. Nor were the reports neglected, for 
explanations of them were demanded. The system of reporting 
went to such a length that nobles dared not speak aloud even 
in the largest palaces, and if they had anything to say they 
communicated by signs." ^ 

The Sultan next, in consultation with the learned professors 
of his court, devised rules and regulations " for grinding down 
the Hindus and for depriving them of that wealth and property 
which fosters disaffection and rebellion." ^ Sharaf Kai, " an 
accomplished scribe and a most honest and intelligent man, 
who had no rival either in capacity or integrity," was the 
Sultan's chief agent in enforcing the regulations, which were 
so effective that " one revenue officer would string twenty 
khuts, mukaddins, or chaudharis together by the neck and 
enforce payment by blows. "^ 

'Ala-ud-din had a short way with those who failed to follow 
the principles of his Kultur implicitly. Being informed that 
some of the chiefs of the ' New Musalmans * or Moguls he had 
enlisted in his army were disaffected and plotting revolt, he 
determined that " the whole of that race settled in his territories 
should be exterminated " and that " not one of the stock 
should be left alive upon the face of the earth." Between 
20,000 and 30,000 of them were accordingly massacred, " of 

^ Tdrlkh-i Firoz Shdhi, Elliot, vol. iii, p. 179. 
2 Ibid., pp. 179-180. 

8 Ibid., p. 182. * Ibid., p. 183. 

302 



'ALA-UD-DIN 

whom probably only a few had any knowledge [of the intended 
revolt]." 1 " After these punishments," adds the Musalman 
historian, " breaches of the peace were never heard of in the 
city." 

'Ala-nd-din, with a self-denial rare in a despot of his type, 
even put a check upon his own vices. Finding that his drinking 
habits impaired his efficiency as a war-lord, he gave up wine- 
parties entirely, prohibited wine-drinking and wine-selling, 
and the use of beer and intoxicating drugs. He ordered that 
the china and glass vessels of his banqueting-hall should be 
broken : " Jars and casks of wine were brought out of the royal 
cellars and emptied at the Badaun Gate in such abundance 
that mud and mire were produced as in the rainy season." ^ 
Holes for the incarceration of wine-bibbers were dug outside 
the gate, and the severity of the punishment was such that 
many of them died. " The terrors of these holes deterred 
many from drinking." He gave minute attention to the 
organisation and equipment of his army ; he attended carefully 
to the upkeep of his lines of communication, establishing posts 
along the roads with relays of horses, from whence regular 
reports of the progress of the army were sent to headquarters. 
To prevent false news being circulated among the troops or 
in the city, reports of the Sultan's health were constantly 
circulated by the same agency.^ 

But the most remarkable of his achievements were the 
economic measures by which he provided for a large increase 
of the effective strength of the army when a formidable in- 
vasion of Moguls threatened his capital. As the resources of 
the imperial treasury would not provide for the necessary 
augmentation without reducing the current rates of pay, he 
was advised by his counsellors that the only alternative was 
to devise regulations and tariffs so that the price of grain and 
other provisions might be brought down to a lower level. In 
that way, they observed, a large army might be maintained at 
a comparatively small expense. 

^ Tdnkh-i Firoz Shahi, EJlliot, vol. iii, p. 206. 
^ Ibid., p. i8o. * Ihid., p. 203. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

'Ala-ud-din's organising capacity was equal to the occasion. 
He first appointed a wise and practical man, Malik Kabul 
Ulugh Khan, as chief controller of the markets, gave him a 
high remuneration and a strong military escort, and placed 
under him an expert staff of officials assisted by intelligent 
spies. Then the Sultan replenished the State granaries by 
ordering that the tribute from a fixed number of villages 
should be paid in kind.^ " By these means so much royal grain 
came to Delhi that there never was a time when there were not 
two or three royal granaries full of grain in the city. When 
there was a deficiency of rain, or when for any reason the cara- 
vans did not arrive and grain became scarce in the markets, 
then the royal stores were opened and the corn was sold at the 
tariff price, according to the wants of the people." ^ 

The Malik's first proceeding was to arrest all the principal 
grain-dealers and carriers, forcing them to give security for 
each other, and detaining them until they had agreed upon a 
common mode of action, i.e., a low fixed tariff. Then they 
with their families, beasts of burden, and cattle were given 
fixed locations in the villages along the banks of the Jumna 
and placed under the supervision of overseers whose orders 
they were compelled to obey. The provincial revenue officers 
and their assistants were instructed that the ryots should be 
compelled to sell their standing corn to the grain-dealers at 
the standard price, but they were allowed to earn the grain- 
carriers' profit by bringing their corn to the market and selling 
it at the tariff rate. Stringent regulations were made to 
prevent either merchants or ryots from concealing or holding 
back their grain. The Sultan himself kept a firm grip upon 
the whole organisation. He received daily reports of the market 
rate and transactions from three different sources, and any 
deviations from the rules were severely punished. 

The success of the scheme was " the wonder of the age." 
Even in years when the rains were deficient there was 

^ This had been the usual custom before the Muhaminadan invasions, but 
evidently the Musalman had insisted on the taxes being paid in coin. 
2 Tarlkh-i Firoz Shdhi, ^Elliot, vol. iii, p. 193. 



'ALA-U^D-DIN 

no scarcity of corn in Delhi, and no rise in the price. " Once 
or twice when the rains were deficient a market-overseer 
reported that the price had risen half a jital, and he received 
twenty blows with the stick. When the rains failed, a quantity 
of corn, sufficient for the daily supply of each quarter of the 
city, was consigned to the dealers every day from the market, 
and half a man used to be allowed to the ordinary purchasers 
in the markets. Thus the gentry and traders, who had no 
villages or lands, used to get grain from the markets. If in 
such a season any poor reduced person went to the market 
and did not get assistance, the overseer received his punish- 
ment whenever the fact found its way to the King's ears." ^ 

Similar arrangements were made for maintaining a maximum 
price for clothing, fruit, vegetables, and other provisions, 
slaves, horses, and cattle. It should be observed that the 
regulation of prices and famine-preventive measures had been 
a recognised branch of traditional Hindu polity, though the 
principles on which they were based were different. 'Ala-ud- 
din's methods of punishment for dealers who gave short weight 
were characteristic. The official inspector took from the 
offender's shop the quantity which was deficient and then cut 
off from the latter's haunches an equal weight of flesh. The 
' Kultural ' effect was that the traders were kept honest and 
" gave such good weight that purchasers often got somewhat 
in excess." 

The virtue of 'Ala-ud-din's KuUur was proved by the fact 
that through these economic measures he raised the strength 
oi his cavalry to 475,000 ; his military organisation was made 
thoroughly efficient, and the arms of Islam everjrwhere tri- 
imphed both over the Hindus and the Moguls. He emulated 
;he barbarity of the latter by bringing thousands of them as 
prisoners to Delhi, where they were cast under the feet of 
• tlephants, and suitable reprisals were taken against the bar- 
)arians by piling up their heads in pyramids and building 
hem into towers. ^ 

^ Tdrikh-i Firoz Shdhi, Elliot, vol. iii, p. 195. 
2 Ibid., p. 197. 

u 305 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Early in his reign 'Ala-ud-din set about the conquests by 
which he hoped to become a second Alexander.^ In 1297 
he sent an expedition to reconquer Gujerat, which had been 
tributary to Qutb-ud-din, but had recovered its independence. 
This being successfully accomplished he laid siege to the hill- 
fortress of Rantambhor, as a preUminary to the conquest of 
Rajputana. The place was stoutly defended for a whole year 
by Hamir Deva, a descendant of the Raja Prithivi-raja of Delhi, 
assisted by some Mogul troops who had taken refuge there, 
but it was finally carried by assault and the whole garrison 
put to the sword. Chitor, which had been recovered by 
the Rajputs, again fell after a siege of many months, and 
again the Rajput women saved their honour by throwing 
themselves into the sacrificial fire, while a devoted band of 
warriors cut their way through the besiegers and rallied in 
their native fastnesses. The Rana himself was made prisoner, 
but escaped in the following year. 'Ala-ud-din contented 
himself with handing over Chitor to a representative of the 
Rana of Mewar's family, who remained as a tributary to Delhi 
for some years, until he was driven out by Hamir. The famous 
Rajput stronghold thereafter kept the banner of the Surya- 
vamsa proudly flying in the midst of its Musalman enemies, ,j 
until it was taken by Akbar and his Rajput allies. i 

In the meantime 'Ala-ud-din had proved the efficiency of his | 
war-machine, not only by repelling several formidable invasions '■. 
of the Mogul hordes, which were then overrunning Kurope and ! 
Asia, and by suppressing dangerous conspiracies among his j 
own followers, but by carrying on a successful campaign in 
the Dekhan imder the command of his general Mahk Kafur. 
The latter was a Hindu slave taken in the conquest of Gujerat, 
who had embraced Islam, and being attached to the imperial 
bodyguard had speedily risen to a high position at the court, 
much to the disgust of 'Ala-ud-din's Turki and Afghan retainers. 
Malik Kafur marched to Deoghur, the scene of 'Ala-ud-din's 
early exploits, and forced the Raja Ram Deva to do homage to 

^ According to Ferishta the title of ' Alexander the Second ' was struck upon | 
the coins of the Empire. i 

306 ' 



'ALA-UD-DIN 

the Stiltan ; then, using that place as a base, he eventually 
swept through the Dekhan and Southern India. In the 
course of several campaigns he captured Warangal, then the 
capital of the Telinga country, Madura, the ancient capital of 
the Pandyas, and Halebid, where the powerful rajas of the 
Hoysala Ballala line then ruled over the territory now com- 
prised in the Mysore state, and part of the Kanarese country. 
The spoils gathered from these rich southern kingdoms were 
prodigious. When Malik Kafur returned to Delhi in 1311 
with the Hoysala raja as his captive, he brought back, it is 
said, 612 elephants, 96,000 mans of gold, several boxes of 
priceless jewels and pearls, and 20,000 horses. The oldest 
inhabitant declared that so much gold and so many elephants 
had never before been brought to Delhi, and the hearts of the 
faithful were made glad by the lavish gifts distributed by the 
Sultan. 1 

Before his death in 1316 'Ala-ud-din was suzerain not only 
of the Musalman kingdom of Gaur, but of the greater part of 
Hindu India. Though in his own person he represented the 
uncompromising barbarity of the Turkish despot, his policy 
and conduct assisted to some extent the process of evolution 
by which the typical Indian Muslim came to regard India as 
his spiritual home, and to make Islam in India the highest 
expression of a great world-religion. The process had already 
begun when the doctors of Islam under Harun-al-Raschid 
began to expand the primitive doctrine of Islam by the study 
of Indian religious thought. It was continued when the Arabs 
gained a firm footing in Aryavarta, and again when Mahmud 
of Ghazni filled the harems of the Musalman world with Indian 
women and sent thousands of Indian craftsmen forth to make 
^ their religion serve the material as well as the spiritual needs 
of Islam in Western Asia. The Indian craftsman was always 
a religious teacher, and the foundations of his belief were not 
shaken when he took a Muslim name and invoked the Deity 
IS Allah instead of Ishvara. The final conquest of Hindustan 
wrought the baser elements of Islam into close contact with 

^ Tdnkh-i Fnoz Shdhi, Elliot, vol. iii, p. 204. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Indian civilisation. But even while India lay prostrate and 
bleeding under the oppressor's foot, the Indian ideal was 
slowly permeating the social and spiritual life of the Muhamma- 
dan conquerors, and Islam was adjusting its dogmas to the 
Indian religious synthesis. 

Indian women were prized above all others in the Muslim 
slave-market on account of their beauty and graceful manners.^ 
'Ala-ud-din himself was captivated by a Rajput princess, 
Kaula Devi, the wife of the Raja of Gujerat, " who for beauty, 
wit, and accomplishments was the flower of India. "^ He took 
her into his harem, and his attachment to her gave a touch of 
romance to the annals of his reign. Kaula Devi had two 
daughters by her Hindu husband, one of whom had died ; 
the surviving one, Dewal Devi, remained in the house of her 
exiled father after her mother had been captured by 'Ala-ud- 
din's general and taken into the imperial harem. Kaula Devi's 
chief desire, when the news reached her at Delhi that her 
daughter was alive, was to obtain possession of her. 'Ala- 
ud-din gave orders, through the governor of Gujerat, that the 
young princess must be sent to Delhi forthwith. The governor 
at first tried to persuade the Raja, Karan Rai, to surrender 
his daughter by promises and threats ; but failing in these 
marched his army against him. The Raja was defeated and 
obliged to fly. Dewal Devi had been sent off previously with 
an escort to be wedded to the Raja of Deoghur ; but the bridal 
party was intercepted by a party of Musalman horsemen in 
the neighbourhood of Ellora, and Dewal Devi was thus restored 
to her mother at Delhi. Soon afterwards the Sultan's eldest 
son, Khizr Khan, fell violently in love with her, and 'Ala-ud-din 
would have consented to the match but for the opposition of 
Khizr Khan's Afghan mother, who wished him to marry the 
daughter of her brother. Alp Khan, governor of Gujerat. 
Eventually, after many romantic adventures, which were sung 
by the court poet. Amir Khusru, a compromise was made and 
Dewal Devi became Khizr Khan's second wife. 

1 Extract from Travels of Shahab-ud-din Abul Abbas Ahmad, Elliot, vol. iii, 
p. 581, 2 Eerishta, Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. 329. 

308 



DEATH OF 'ALA-UD-DIN 

'Ala-ud-din had many wives, and the impartiaHty with which 
he chose them made his court a hot-bed of intrigues between 
the Rajput, Turki, and Afghan factions. Towards the end of 
his reign, when his health was impaired by intemperance, he 
was no longer able to keep a firm grip on the reins of govern- 
ment. Revolts broke out in Gujerat and in the Dekhan, the 
Rajputs recovered Chitor, and 'Ala-ud-din's death was the 
signal for the usual murderous scramble for power, in which 
his Indian general, Malik Kafur, the conqueror of the Dekhan, 
took the leading part. He succeeded in putting out the eyes 
of 'Ala-ud-din's two eldest sons, and would have done the same 
with the third, Mubarik Khan, if assassins had not put a stop 
to his crimes. 

Mubarik Khan, the last of the Khilji line, then ascended the 
throne of Delhi in 1317, and immediately gave way to unbridled 
excesses. " He became infamous," says Ferishta, " for every 
vice that can disgrace human nature, and condescended so far 
as to dress himself often like a common actress and go with 
the public women to dance at the houses of the nobility." The 
next upstart who was enabled by the social philosophy of 
Islam to hack his way to a throne was a Hindu pariah who 
found favour with Mubarik and then murdered him. He 
rallied round him the lowest rabble of Delhi, both Musalman 
and Hindu, and for five months the city was a pandemonium. 
When at last the contending factions had settled with each 
other the Khilji line was found to be exterminated, and in 132 1 
Ghiyas-ud-din, the first of the Tughlak dynasty, became Sultan 
under the name of Tughlak Shah. 

The new Sultan was of Turkish or Tartar race on his 
father's side, but his mother was an Indian J at. Finding the 
political atmosphere of Delhi unhealthy, he built himself a 
citadel about four miles away to the east — ^the grim fortress 
to which he gave the name of Tughlakabad. With equal 
prudence he strengthened the defences of the north-west 
frontier to keep back the Mogul hordes, always waiting for an 
opportunity to swoop down into the Indus valley and spoil 
the spoilers of Hindustan. The rest of his five years' reign 

309 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

he was occupied in suppressing revolts of his Hindu tributaries 
in the Dekhan and Maharashtra, and in bringing Gaur back to 
its allegiance to the Delhi Sultanate. 

Tughlak Shah met with his death by the collapse of a wooden 
pavilion which had been raised for his reception on his return 
from a successful expedition to Tirhut. The mystery of the 
' accident ' was never cleared up, but as this was one of the 
methods of getting rid of an enemy recognised by Indian 
diplomacy, there is good reason to suspect foul play. Muham- 
mad Tughlak, his eldest son, enjoyed the unusual luxury of a 
peaceful accession. " On this occasion the streets of the city 
[of Delhi] were strewed with flowers ; the houses adorned ; 
drums beaten ; and every demonstration of joy was exhibited. 
The new monarch ordered some elephants laden with gold and 
silver to precede and follow the procession, from which money 
was scattered among the populace." ^ 

Muhammad had all the accomplishments of the Turkish 
dilettante which in later times distinguished the Great Moguls, 
but he was hopelessly incapable as a statesman and ruler of 
men. He excelled in Persian and Arabic calligraphy. He had 
studied Greek philosophy, and resumed the traditions of Indo- 
Aryan courts by debating metaphysical problems with the 
learned doctors of Islam and by bestowing a liberal patronage 
upon men of letters. He took interest in astronomy, mathe- 
matics, and the physical sciences. He established hospitals 
and almshouses for widows and orphans. Ferishta also states 
that he sometimes went so far as to attend on sick persons 
whose symptoms excited his curiosity, but in such legends of 
court life a liberal allowance must be made for courtly fantasy. 
He observed all the outward professions of a good Musalman, 
was regular in his daily prayers, and abstained from drunken- 
ness and other vices condemned by the Prophet. 

His conscience was not satisfied by purging the court of the 
shameless debauchery which had disgraced the name of Islam. 
He sought to repair the errors of his predecessors, who for 
several centuries had totally ignored the temporal supremacy 

* Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. 409. 
310 



MUHAMMAD TUGHLAK 

of the Khalif. To secure the pontifical blessing he sent an 
embassy with rich presents to Egypt and caused the Khalif 's 
name to be struck on the imperial coinage and to be substituted 
for his own in public worship in the mosques. When his 
ambassador returned from Egypt with the Khalif's envoy 
bearing the letter which confirmed his own authority as vSultan, 
Muhammad advanced in person with all humility to receive it, 
put the letter on his head, and opened it with great solemnity 
and respect.^ A grand festival was ordered in the envoy's 
honour, and Muhammad gave orders that every Sultan's name 
which had not received the Khalif's confirmation should be 
omitted in the reading of the Khutha in the mosques. 

In striking contrast to his religious professions was Muham- 
mad's conduct as a ruler. " He was," says his biographer 
and co-religionist, " wholly devoid of mercy or consideration 
for his people. So little did he hesitate to spill the blood of 
God's creatures, that when anjrthing occurred which excited 
him to proceed to that horrid extremity, one might have 
supposed his object was to exterminate the human species 
altogether." He suffered from megalomania to such an extent 
that his actions often laid him open to the suspicion of mental 
derangement — as when he ordered one of his own teeth to be 
buried with much ceremony, and caused a magnificent monu- 
ment to be raised over it. 2 He surpassed 'Ala-ud-din in the 
grandeur of his schemes of world-conquest, but totally lacked 
the great Khilji Sultan's military genius and capacity for 
organisation. Disregarding the remonstrances of his military 
advisers, he launched an army of 100,000 men on a wild project 
of conquering China, and put to death the few who returned 
to tell the tale of their disasters. On the other hand, when an 
army of Moguls under Timtir Shin Khan invaded the Panjab 
and threatened Delhi, he could only meet the situation by the 
feeble device of buying off the enemy with large presents of 

^ Ferishta, vol. i, p. 426. 

^ Ferishta, however, does not observe that this proceeding might have 
been in derision of the Buddhist practice of building stupas over the bodily 
relics of their Master. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

gold and jewels. His ruthless cruelty and senseless exactions 
roused both his own provincial governors and his Hindu 
feudatories to rebellion : he revenged himself by having his 
own nephew flayed alive, and by organising man-hunts on a 
large scale by which whole districts were depopiilated. 

Among the grandiose schemes of Muhammad's disordered 
brain was the removal of his capital from Delhi to Deoghur. 
Though the distance between the two places is considerable, 
such a resolve would not have been inconsistent with Indian 
monarchical traditions had not the Sultan also resolved to 
celebrate the event by ordering that the whole population of 
Delhi, men, women, and children, with all their movable pro- 
perty, should accompany him. The poor were to be provided 
with money and food for the journey, and even trees were to 
be planted along the roads to give a fictitious splendour to the 
grand procession, but not a cat or a dog was to be left in Delhi. 
No one dared to disobey, but many died on the road, and of 
those who reached Deoghur many were exposed to terrible 
privations from lack of means of subsistence. Muhammad 
tried to appease the discontent of his soldiers by laying out 
the new capital, which he called Daulatabad, on a magnificent 
scale ; but two years afterwards he was constrained to return 
to Delhi, and again his unfortunate subjects were made the 
victims of his caprice. The effect of this was noticed by Ibn 
Batuta, the traveller, who visited India and took service for 
a time under Muhammad Tughlak at Delhi. The city was the 
greatest and most magnificent in the world, he said, but it 
had the fewest inhabitants.^ 

When the imperial treasury had been exhausted by his 
boundless extravagance another brilliant idea entered the head 
of this hare-brained autocrat. He had heard that in China 
there was a paper currency, the notes used instead of coin 
being stamped with the Emperor's seal and made payable at 
the imperial treasury. Muhammad Tughlak thought it a better 
plan to issue copper coins as counters and by an imperial decree 
to make them pass at the value of gold and silver. This was 

1 Elliot's History of India, vol. iii, p. 585. 
312 



MUHAMMAD TUGHLAK 

an opportunity of which the Hindu metal-workers promptly 
took advantage. Every village became an open mint, and the 
whole population joined in the game of defrauding the imperial 
treasury. For a time the Sultan's credit was good enough 
and the golden days of Aryavarta seemed to have returned. 
The people gladly paid their tribute in copper instead of gold, 
and they bought all the necessaries and luxuries they desired 
in the same coin. But the prudent merchants bought in 
copper and sold in gold. The Sultan's tokens were not accepted 
in countries in which his decrees did not run. Soon the whole 
external trade of Hindustan came to a standstill. When at 
last " the copper tankas had become more worthless than clods," 
the Sultan in a rage repealed his edict and proclaimed that 
the treasury would exchange gold coins for his copper ones. 

The effect of this decree may be imagined. " Thousands of 
men from various quarters who possessed thousands of these 
copper coins and caring nothing for them . . . now brought them 
to the treasury and received in exchange gold tankas and silver 
tankas. ... So many of these copper tankas were brought to 
the treasury that heaps of them rose up in Tughlakabad like 
mountains." ^ Muhammad was obliged to close his treasur^^ 
The sharp-witted merchants had made fortunes, but thou- 
sands were ruined, and the Sultan vented his wrath upon 
his unfortunate subjects by devising fresh means of pitiless 
extortion. 

Hindustan was reduced to the same plight as Armenia in the 
worst days of Turkish misrule. The ryots in the fertile tract 
between the Ganges and the Jumna set fire to their houses 
in despair and retired to the forests with their families and 
cattle, eking out a precarious existence by brigandage. Whole 
provinces were desolated by famine, populous towns were 
deserted. Thousands sought refuge in Bengal (Gaur), which 
had thrown off its allegiance, or placed themselves beyond the 
reach of the Delhi tyrant in other provinces. Even the Sultan's 
household at times was inconvenienced by the general distress, 
so that Muhammad's heart " seemed for once to be softened 

^ Tdnkh-i Flroz Shdhi, Elliot, vol. iii, pp. 240-241. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

by the miseries of his subjects." He directed that large sums 
should be distributed for the encouragement of husbandry 
and commerce. The recipients of his bounty, however, were 
so distressed that they spent the money on the purchase of the 
necessaries of life, and many of them were severely punished 
on that account. 

Towards the end of his reign, following the usual practice of 
his predecessors, he drove the best of his Musalman officers 
to revolt by conferring high rank upon men of the meanest 
birth and vilest character, who were only too willing to be 
made instruments of his wickedness. Some of the feudatory 
Hindu princes joined in the revolt. Muhammad Tughlak 
escaped the fate which overtook so many other of the Delhi 
Sultans by dying of a fever in 1350 after a reign of twenty-five 
years. 



3H 



CHAPTER III 
FIRUZ SHAH 

FIRUZ SHAH, Muhammad Ttighlak's nephew and suc- 
cessor, is perhaps not unduly praised in Muhammadan 
chronicles as a wise and humane ruler, according to 
the ethics of Islam. His reign is a welcome break in the long 
chain of tyranny, cruelty, and debauch which makes up the 
gloomy annals of the Turki dynasties. His Musalman bio- 
graphers naturally attribute his virtues as a man and as a 
ruler to his devotion to the teaching of Islam, and do not 
attempt to penetrate deeper into the psychology of Indo- 
Muhammadan history. But one of them, Shams-i-Siraj 'Alif, 
who was a contemporary of Firuz Shah, and in high favour at 
his court, gives us a clue left unnoticed by Anglo-Indian writers 
who have followed Fergusson's lead in treating Islamic culture 
in India as a foreign importation. 

Firuz Shah's mother was a Rajputni, one of the beautiful 
and accomplished daughters of the Rana Mall Bhatti. His 
father, Sipah Salar Rajab, was a younger brother of the first 
Tughlak Stdtan, Ghiyas-ud-din, who acted as Governor of 
Dipalpur during the reign of 'Ala-ud-din. Every young Turki 
noble in those days, by fair means or foul, filled his harem 
with high-born Indian women, and the Governor of Dipalpur 
when he was seeking a suitable match for his brother heard 
the praises of Bibi Naila, Rana Mali's beautiful daughter. He 
accordingly sent "intelligent and acute" messengers to the 
father with a proposal of marriage on his brother's behalf. 
The Rajput chief indignantly rejected the offer, with language 
which was "unseemly and improper." The Governor, after 
debating long upon the next course to take, proceeded to Rana 
Mall's villages and demanded immediate payment in cash of 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the whole year's taxes. "The mukaddins and chaudharis 
were subjected to coercion and payment in full was insisted 
upon." 

In the days of 'Ala-ud-din, observes the Musalman historian, 
the protests of Hindu landowners were unavailing and no one 
dared to make any outcry. The exact methods of coercion 
adopted by the Governor's agents are not partictilarised, but 
in the course of two or three days, we are told, the Hindus 
" were reduced to extremities and suffered much hardship." 

Reports of the people's distress soon reached the ears of 
the Rana's aged mother. Knowing well the object of the 
Governor's proceedings, she went to her son's house at the 
time of evening prayer, " weeping and tearing her hair, and 
spoke most feelingly upon the matter." Bibi Naila happened 
to be in the courtyard and anxiously inquired the cause of 
her grandmother's grief. " I am weeping for you, Naila," 
replied the venerable lady, " for it is on your account that 
Tughlak Shah oppresses the people of this land." The high- 
spirited girl dried her grandmother's tears. " If my surrender," 
she exclaimed, " will deliver our people from such misery, send 
me to him at once : only say that the Moguls have carried off 
one of your daughters." The proud Rana was moved by his 
heroic daughter's self-sacrifice, and at last gave his assent to 
the marriage. Messengers were sent to the Governor to 
announce the fact. Bibi Naila was brought to Dipalpur, and 
as the bride of Sipah Salar became known by the name of the 
Sultana Bibi KadbanH.^ 

We hear nothing of the life of the devoted Rajput lady in 
the seclusion of the harem, except that she was left a widow 
seven years after the birth of her only child, Firuz Shah, and 
that Tughlak Shah was kind to his brother's wife and treated 
the child as his own. Tughlak Shah became Sultan when 
Firuz was a youth, and the latter accompanied his uncle 
during four and a half years of his reign on his State 
tours. Muhammad Shah, it is said, was exceedingly kind and 
generous to him, and instructed him in affairs of State. For 

^ Tdrikh-i Ftroz Shdhi, Elliot, vol. iii, pp. 272-273. 
316 



FIRUZ SHAH 

some years before he came to the throne he served as a 
provincial governor. Firuz Shah's courtly historian, quietly 
ignoring the black record of Muhammad Shah's reign, attri- 
butes his capacity as a ruler to the training he received from 
his two uncles, but reveals the whole truth by the glimpse he 
gives us of the Sultana Bibi Kadbanti's early life. The blood 
of Indo-Aryan royalty ran in the veins of Firuz Shah, and it 
was at his Rajput mother's knee that he learnt the lesson of 
noblesse oblige and the great traditions of Aryan polity which 
guided him in after-life. 

Firuz Shah's uncles, nevertheless, took good care that in 
his religious instruction he should be brought up according to 
the strictest canons of Islam and with an inveterate intolerance 
of the popular forms of Hindu ritual. He was as zealous an 
iconoclast as Mahmud of Ghazni, and like a good Sunni forbade 
the painting of portraits in the royal palaces. He reimposed 
the jizya, or poll-tax, upon Brahmans, who had been exempt 
from it in former reigns, declaring that they were " the very 
keys of the chamber of idolatry " and ought to be taxed first. 
An old Brahman, charged with idol-worship and with the 
perversion of Muhammadan women, having refused to accept 
Islam, was burned alive in front of the Sultan's palace, together 
with the wooden tablets " covered with paintings of demons 
and other objects " which were the damning proof of his heresy. 

Firuz Shah apparently constituted himself a Grand Inquisi- 
tor both of Musalmans and Hindus. He burned the books 
of the Shiahs, suppressed the propaganda they were making, 
and put to death a Musalman fanatic who claimed divine 
inspiration as a prophet and " led people astray with mystic 
practices." He was equally severe with Hindus of the Sakta 
sect, who worshipped the creative principle with obscene 
rites. He forbade the persecution of Hinduism in general, 
but " destroyed their idol temples and instead thereof built 
mosques." 

Though Firuz Shah seems to have been a pious and zealous 
Musalman it is not quite clear whether he acted thus entirely 
from conscientious motives. Probably he tried to placate the 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

fanatical Sunni faction at court by giving them a fiee hand 
in rehgious matters. Certain incidents of his reign warrant 
the belief that he lacked strength of character and often allowed 
his better judgment to be overruled by the learned doctors 
of the law and the powerful nobles whose support secured his 
succession to the throne. He was by no means of a cruel 
disposition like so many of his predecessors ; neither was he 
an ascetic or a lugubrious saint. Every Friday after public 
prayers at the mosque there were great entertainments in the 
palace at which musicians, story-tellers, and athletes to the 
number of three thousand took part. He was an enthusiastic 
big-game hunter and an epicure in his choice of wines. " Some 
were yellow as saffron, some red as the rose, some were white ; 
and the taste of all was like sweet milk." 

An amusing anecdote told by his eulogistic biographer is a 
revelation of his character and like one of those delightful 
miniature pictures with which the court painters recorded the 
intimate life of the Great Moguls. The Sultan was marching 
with a brave and well-appointed army to bring Gaur back to 
its allegiance. The strictest discipline was to be observed 
among all ranks, such were the Sultan's orders. But one 
morning after prayers the Great King felt thirsty and called 
for a glass of his favourite wine. While he was "moistening 
his throat," the Khan-i-'Azam, Tatar Khan, a distinguished 
general and an austere and pious M^salman, came to the 
imperial tent to demand an audience on important business. 
The Sultan was greatly annoyed at the interruption, and sent 
his son, Fath Khan, to put him oft" with some excuse. But 
Tatar Khan insisted, and the Sultan, having hastily pushed 
the wine flask and cups under the couch and thrown a sheet 
over it, sat down on a coverlet to receive him. Immediately'' 
the general came into the imperial presence he sniffed the 
aroma of the wine, and his keen eye caught sight of the cups 
hidden under the couch. He was so troubled by the sight that 
his lips failed to utter the usual salutation. The Sultan spoke 
not a word, neither did he. At length Tatar Khan began to 
sermonise the shamefaced Sultan, reminding him that they 
318 



FIRUZ SHAH 

were marcliing against the enemy, and " the time was one for 
repentance, abasement, and prayer." Firnz Shah tried to 
dissimulate, asked what the general meant and whether any- 
thing untoward had happened. The Khan-i-'Azam replied 
sternly that " he perceived certain articles under the bed." 
" Yes, I like to take a little now and then," said the Sultan 
apologetically. But Tatar Khan was not to be put off with 
such feeble excuses, and after lecturing the humiliated monarch 
severely took an oath from him that he would drink no more 
wine while the IChan remained with the army. " Tatar Khan 
gave thanks to God and went away." 

The Sultan kept his oath, but the Khan-i-'Azam did not 
remain long with the army. After the latter had left the tent 
Firuz Shah " sat brooding over the matter and thought the 
Khan had spoken to him in a disrespectful and unkind manner." 
He was magnanimous enough not to take severe notice of the 
old general's uncourtly behaviour ; but a few days afterwards 
the Khan-i-'Azam was despatched to a remote district " to 
restore order and quiet." ^ 

Firuz Shah's administrative reforms entitle him to a high 
place among the great rulers of India. During his long reign 
Hindustan recovered a great measure of its former prosperity 
and contentment. In secular matters he was guided by the 
high ideals of a royal race which his Rajput mother had taught 
him. The intolerable oppression of the ryots ceased. No 
demand in excess of the regular Government dues was allowed 
to be made. Agriculture revived, and while prices were lower 
than they had been in the days of 'Ala-ud-din, the homes of 
the ryots " were replete with grain, property, horses, and furni- 
ture," and every one had plenty of gold and silver. ^ Shams-i- 
Siraj 'Alif contrasts this state of prosperity with their condi- 
tion under former Muhammadan sovereigns : " Several writers 
told the author of this work that it was the practice to leave 
the raiyat one cow and take away all the rest." 

Firuz Shah's edicts, though not free from sectarian bias, 

1 Tdnkh-i Firoz Shahi, EJUiot, vol. iii, pp. 306-307. 

2 Ibid., p. 290. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

breathed the humanitarian spirit of Asoka's. " In the reigns 
of former kings," he declared, " the blood of many Musalmans 
has been shed, and many varieties of torture employed. . . . 
The Great and Merciful God made me, His servant, hope and 
seek for His mercy by devoting myself to prevent the unlawful 
killing of Musalmans and the infliction of any kind of torture 
upon them or upon any men." His religious feeling and high 
sense of justice were also shown in his desire to make amends, 
as far as possible, for the misdeeds of his predecessors. He 
gave orders that the heirs of all persons who had been put to 
death or mutilated in the last reign should be compensated 
from the imperial treasury, so that " they might be reconciled 
to the late Sultan " and sign declarations of their satisfaction. 
These documents were then put into a chest and deposited at 
the head of Muhammad's tomb, " in the hope that God in 
His great clemency would show mercy to my late friend and 
patron." In the same pious spirit he restored to their rightful 
owners all village lands and patrimonies that had been wrong- 
fully taken from them in former reigns. 

lyike Akbar, Firuz vShah took a special interest in planning 
new cities, building palaces and mosques, as well as schools, 
hospitals, public rest-houses, and other charitable institutions, 
and in laying out gardens. Among other cities he built a new 
capital at Firuzabad, five kos distant from Delhi, in which 
there were eight public mosques each with a courtyard large 
enough for 10,000 worshippers. During the forty years of his 
reign, says his biographer, every kos on the road from Delhi 
to Firuzabad was crowded with carriages, palanquins, mules, 
and horses, besides foot-passengers swarming " like ants or 
locusts." Firuz Shah also founded Jaunpur, naming it in 
honour of his friend and patron, Muhammad vShah, one of 
whose names was Jaunan. It afterwards became the capital 
of the Sharki Sultans and a great seat of Muhammadan learn- 
ing, rivalling the fame of its ancient Hindu neighbour, Benares. 
Fathabad, or Futtehabad, named after his son, Fath Khan, 
and HissSr Firuza were also planned under the Siiltan's orders, 
and amply provided, according to the Hindu tradition, with 
320 



FIRUZ SHAH 

public fruit-gardens, wells, and reservoirs. One of his irriga- 
tion works was a great canal from the head-waters of the 
Jumna, Hansi, and Hissar, which, however, fell into disuse 
after his death. It has been restored and extended by the 
British Government, and now irrigates a large tract of land 
in the Panjab. Firuz Shah is said to have laid out in the 
neighbourhood of Delhi alone no less than 1200 gardens 
planted with black and white grapes, some of which were 
leased for private cultivation, and some bestowed as endow- 
ments upon religious institutions. 

Among his other administrative activities Firuz Shah paid 
great attention to the organisation of the institution of slavery ; 
partly, it would seem, to prevent the inhuman massacre of 
prisoners of war, partly to increase the supply of skilled 
artisans in Musalman cities, and partly to bring more infidels 
within the Muslim pale. No doubt the Muhammadan invasions 
and the tinsettled condition of Hindustan in the previous 
reigns had driven great numbers of Hindu craftsmen to avoid 
forced labour under Musalman masters by emigration. Firuz 
Shah gave orders to his officers and feudatories that as many 
prisoners as possible should be taken in war-time, and that 
the best should be sent for the service of the court. " Those 
chiefs who brought many slaves received the highest favour, 
and those that brought few received proportionately little 
consideration." The effect was that numbers far in excess of 
the Sultan's requirements were sent to Delhi, but the situation 
was met by distributing them over the different provinces. 
Some were employed in the Sultan's body-guard and personal 
service, or in the army. Some were sent to study the Quran 
and the law of Islam at Mecca, or at the numerous Muslim 
colleges in India ; others were apprenticed to tradesmen and 
taught handicrafts. In this way " 12,000 slaves became 
artisans of various kinds." 

The Sultan took great interest in the welfare of his prose- 
lytes, gave them fixed allowances in money or in kind, and 
created a separate department for administering their affairs. 
He showed the same consideration for Hindus who in order 

X 321 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

to escape the poll-tax, or for other reasons, voluntarily came 
to the mosques and professed the Muslim faith. The amirs 
and maliks, following the Sultan's good example, treated 
their slaves like children, " providing them with food and 
raiment, lodging them and training them, and taking every 
care of their wants." On their yearly visits to court they 
took their slaves with them and gave reports upon their merits 
and utilities, which Firuz Shah received with great interest. 
Unfortunately this happy state of things did not last long. 
After the Sultan's death, adds the court historian, " the heads 
of his favoured servants were cut off without mercy, and were 
made into heaps in front of the darbar." ^ 

In spite of Firuz Shah's brilliant record, his reign was another 
illustration of the inherent weakness of Muhammadan polity. 
The power of a military caste had made the mere recital of 
the Musalman faith a social and political mantram as potent 
as any of those by which Brahman philosophers claimed to 
be able to control the forces of the universe. Nominally based 
upon the principle of universal brotherhood, the social pro- 
gramme of Islam became more tyrannous in its working than 
the caste system ; for it exalted the rights of the individual 
above the rights of the community, through seeking to gain 
converts by compulsion and by material inducements rather 
than by an appeal to conscience or intellect. Hindu polity 
gave the monarch divine right as the representative of Vishnu, 
the Preserver and I^ord of life — a right which had been earned 
by the merit of former lives — ^but even the lowest of his subjects 
might by a similar process of spiritual evolution rise to king- 
ship. _ \ 

The difference between the Hindu and Muhammadan 
systems is well illustrated in their different methods of build- 
ing construction. In the former the weight of personal 
responsibility was evenly distributed from the top to the 
bottom of the political fabric, right down to the foundation 
of it in the village community. In the latter the stability of 
the structure depended upon the soundness of the keystones 

^ Tdnkh-i Firoz Shahl, Elliot, vol. iii, p. 342. 
322 



FIRUZ SHAH 

of the arches — if one failed the house might soon become unfit 
for human habitation. Islam produced many men of com- 
manding ability and fine character, but never a great dynasty, 
giving to the State a long succession of happy and prosperous 
years. Under Hindu rule the prosperity of the State, as a 
whole, was to a large extent independent of the personal 
character of the ruling monarch ; the strength of its founda- 
tions, broad based upon its village life, was proved by the 
rapidity with which it recovered from the effects of centuries 
of devastation and tyranny. Firuz Shah in a comparatively 
short time effaced the miserable record of his predecessor's 
misdeeds, but in his declining years his strength failed, and 
even before his death in 1388, at the age of ninety, the system 
of good government reconstructed by him began to fall to 
pieces. In a few years after his death Hindustan was again 
in a state of chaos ; the defences of the north-west frontier 
broke down, and the Mogul hordes under Timur poured in an 
overwhelming flood over the unhappy country. 



323 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT OF THE 
MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST 

EFORE continuing the chronicle of the Mtihammadan 
dynasties of India it will be well to consider the 
psychological aspect of the events of the period of 
four centuries from the time of Mahmud of Ghazni to the 
invasions of Timur. The materials for the study of this 
question are not to be found in the writings of Muhammadan 
historians. Brahmanical books for the most part pass over 
the M^ammadan invasions in silence. But India from the 
third century B.C. has an unbroken chain of psychological 
evidence, invaluable for historical research, by which the 
biased and distorted statements of Musalman historians can 
be checked. An impartial and sound judgment of this 
material is of vital importance for the understanding of Indian 
history. 

A pious Hindu might easily be led to regard the long period 
of bloodshed and destruction which followed the Muhammadan 
invasions as an unmitigated disaster to his motherland and to 
the great civilisation of which Aryavarta was the centre. But 
the true Hindu philosopher would not have failed to discern 
the will of Providence even in the blind rage of the Musalman 
fanatic : he was too devoted a student of natural laws not to 
understand that behind the apparent ruin of his cause lay a 
new impulse for the progress of the human race. Brahman 
culture in the field it had created for itself had reached its 
apex : its creative energy was on the wane. Endless reitera- 
tion and hair-splitting dialectics would not carry it to greater 
heights or widen the circle of its activity. On the contrary'', 
mere mechanical processes of thought would tend to diminish 

324 



EFFECT OF MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST 

the deductive power by which Hindu science had won its 
greatest triumphs. The metaphysical researches in which 
Hinduism was engaged were too abstruse for the comprehension 
of the masses : the elaborate symbolic ritual which served as 
a spiritual kindergarten for the latter was overgrown with 
superstition and chicanery, demoralising for both the teacher 
and the pupil. The sword of Islam was the Creator's pruning- 
knife which removed the decaying branches and cut back the 
unfruitful growth of the tree of knowledge He had planted 
in Aryavarta. 

The organisation of Buddhism, which, as a sectarian group, 
had lost its intellectual influence in India before Islam gained 
a footing in the Indus valley, was entirely broken up as the 
storm of the Muhammadan invasions spread over Hindustan. 
The Hindu aristocracy, representative of the higher Brahmanical 
culture which survived, either left their desecrated shrines and 
avoided the polluting touch of the barbarians by emigration, 
or, if circumstances compelled them to remain, began to seek 
a modus vivendi with the temporal power which supplanted 
their own. The first effect of the Muhammadan invasions 
and the break-up of many ancient seats of Brahmanical learn- 
ing was therefore a great impetus to Aryan culture in the 
Dekhan and Southern India — a rush of learned Brahmans and 
skilled Hindu craftsmen to the friendly shelter of the Chola 
and Rashtrakuta courts or those of their tributaries. This 
migration may have influenced, if it did not originate, the 
religious movement of which Ramanuja, the Vaishnava 
reformer, was the leader at the end of the eleventh and begin- 
ning of the twelfth centuries. The north of India, since the 
Vaishnava revival under the Gupta emperors, had leaned for 
the most part toward this school of philosophic teaching, or 
its counterpart in Buddhistic doctrine, the Mahayana school. 
The South remained firmly attached to its early Brahmanical 
teachers — who in the ninth century, as we have already seen, 
found a new exponent in Sankaracharya — or to their Buddhist 
rivals of the Hinayana school. Sankaracharya had defeated 
the Jains in Southern India and completed the overthrow of 

325 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Buddhism by popularising the Adwaita philosophy of the 
Vedanta — the theory of the ' One without a second/ which 
was the Brahmanical statement of Muhammad's formula, 
" There is no God but Allah." 

Ramanuja, who opposed to Sankaracharya's teaching a 
qualified form of monism, according to tradition was born at 
Kanchi ; but Southern Vaishnavism, says Sister Nivedita, 
" is the Vaishnavism of the Gupta Empire. It was the Vaish- 
navism that was spread far and wide with the story of the 
Mahabharata." ^ Vaishnavism in Southern India, from a 
sectarian point of view, always remained an exotic : a fact 
which is emphasised in its temple architecture, for the famous 
shrines at Srirangam and Con j ever am have not the charac- 
teristic architectonic symbol of Vaishnavism — ^the sikhara, 
Vishnu's holy mountain, or the mystic blue lotus with turned- 
down petals — they are only Saiva temples, or symbols of the 
Great Yogi's hermitage at Kailasa, in which Vishnu images 
are enshrined. We need not, however, take this as a proof 
that Ramanuja's teaching had no permanent effect upon 
South Indian religious thought, but rather as an indication 
of the many points at which different lines of Indian thought 
intersected each other. 

The development of the Aryanisation of the South was by 
no means the most important result of the impact of Islam 
upon Hindu civilisation. Of far greater consequence was its 
effect upon Islam itself. For just as in the days of Asoka the 
intellectual aristocracy of Aryavarta began to make the teach- 
ing of the Buddha its own by formulating its metaphysical 
theories and giving them a Vedic interpretation, so the Brah- 
mans of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries began to 
shape the metaphysics of Islam, to guide its statecraft and 
to reconcile racial and social antipathies by bringing it into 
the Hindu synthesis. It was into this effort that the 
finer spirits of Hinduism put their greatest strength and 
achieved the greatest results. In the service of Islam they 
healed the gaping wounds of their beloved motherland and 

1 Footfalls of Indian History, p. 208. 
326 



EFFECT OF MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST 

won back by spiritual weapons what they had lost on the 
battlefield. 

We have already seen how Islam, directly or indirectly, had 
been gathering spiritual nourishment from India, partly by 
intellectual intercourse and partly by racial assimilation, even 
before Muhammadan sovereignty was finally established on 
Indian soil. It is not, however, easy to demonstrate by 
concrete illustrations the subtle effect of such spiritual and 
physical intercourse upon the early development of Islam. 
In its early stages a new religion, when it is gathering to itself 
material from many sources, does not leave behind many 
traces of the process of its spiritual growth for historians to 
analyse. But the material for the study of the impact of 
Hinduism upon Islam, and vice versa, after the Muhammadan 
conquest is abundant, especially from the fourteenth century 
onward, when independent dynasties, mostly of Indian descent, 
began to set themselves up in the more distant provinces of 
the Delhi Empire. From that time the craftsmen of these 
Indo-Muhammadan courts began to revive the finest traditions 
of Hindu culture in their wonderful mosques, palaces, public 
gardens, wells, bathing-places, and irrigation works, conse- 
crated, as of old, to the service of the One God whom Brahmans 
worshipped as Ishvara, or Narain, Muhammadans as Allah. 
In the heroic spirit of that noble Rajput lady, the mother of 
Firuz Shah, India surrendered her body to the Muhammadan 
conqueror that from her womb a new Islam might be born, 
and through her self-sacrifice the sufferings of Aryavarta might 
be mitigated. This new Islamic culture, which began when 
Mahmud of Ghazni made the royal craftsmen of Mathura and 
Kanauj build for him the mosque of ' the Celestial Bride,' is in 
ever3rthing but name a Hindu Renaissance, Ahmadabad, the 
capital of Muhammadan Gujerat, was created by the royal 
craftsmen of Rajputana ; the Gaur of the Musalman Sultans 
was a new lyakhnauti ; Benares was the mother of Jaunpur ; 
Dhar the mother of Mandu ; the royal craftsmen of the 
Vijayanagar rajas built the capital of the Muhammadan 
dynasty of Bijapur. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Each of these Muhammadan royal cities developed distinc- 
tive types of building derived from the local characteristics 
of the parent Hindu cities. There was an interchange of 
ideas between different parts of Muhammadan India, Gaur, 
for instance, was in touch with the west coast through her 
maritime connections. Persia was a province of Aryan India, 
and there had been a constant interchange of ideas between 
Ariana and Aryavarta for thousands of years. The ' Sara- 
cenic ' architecture of Persia was founded upon the old Bud- 
dhist biiilding traditions which India had given to Western 
Asia : the pointed arch and the half-domed porches and 
windows of Persian mosques were an adaptation of the niched 
shrines in which Buddhist images were placed. The mullas, 
having satisfied their conscience by destroying the hated 
images, converted Buddhist temples into mosques and adopted 
the empty niches as a symbol of the true faith, so that gradually 
the niche with the pointed arch became an essential feature 
in the structure of new Muhammadan buildings. 

The same thing happened in India. The mullas dictated 
their ritualistic requirements to the Hindu master-builders. 
The latter shaped them into architectural form according to 
the traditions of the Hindu Silpa-Sastras, and thus created 
every type of Indo-Muhammadan architecture. The so-called 
Saracenic architecture of India was in no sense a foreign 
importation, as Western writers have made it, but a new 
development of Indo- Aryan culture. To say this is not to 
depreciate its superlative aesthetic merits, but to give it its 
true place in Indian history. 

Naturally if the Western critic, plunging headlong into the 
study of Indo-Aryan culture, takes the perfected type of an 
Indian mosque or tomb, as it was developed in the seventeenth 
century, and compares it with a Hindu temple of the tenth 
century, he will find it impossible to realise that the one 
could be evolved from the other, or that the Muliammadan 
conquerors of India did not inspire Indian craftsmen with 
foreign ideas, or bring in ' Saracenic ' builders to instruct 
them in the traditions of the West. He will assuredly agree 
328 



1 



EFFECT OF MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST 

with Fergusson that in some unexplored corner of Central 
Asia there will be found eventually the key to the mystery. 
But if the study of Indo-Muhammadan building is co-ordinated 
with the political and religious history of the period and care- 
fully followed step by step from the beginning, it will not be 
necessary to fall back upon such a vague dilettante hypothesis. 

Islam did not alter Indian aesthetic principles or add to 
them, but was the unconscious instrument of giving Indian 
art a new impulse, Indian master-builders had concentrated 
for many centuries upon the idea of the manifoldness of the 
Deity ; they had gone as far as it was possible to go in that 
direction. Islam gave them an introspective bent of mind, 
and they began to concentrate on the idea of the Unity of the 
Godhead. The effect of this change of mood can be seen in 
the gradual development of an Indo-Muhammadan or new 
Indo-Aryan building tradition inspired by Indian ideals, not 
by the rank materialism of the Musalman conqueror. It was 
as if the philosophy of the Vedanta which permeated the 
esoteric thought of India gradually became embodied in the 
stone and marble of Indian mosques and tombs and crystallised 
in the ritualistic forms of the Muhammadan faith. But this 
aesthetic ideal was no new inspiration to Indian art : it ran 
through the whole tradition of Indian sculpture and painting 
from the beginning of the Christian era to the time of the 
Muhammadan conquest. The exquisite refinement of contour 
which Indo-Muhammadan tomb-builders achieved, and their 
comparative reticence in surface decoration, had their counter- 
parts and prototypes in the marvellous profiles and massive 
generalisations with which the Indian painter realised his 
ideal of the divine Buddha at Ajanta ; the inspiration of the 
Trimurti of Elephanta and of the bronze Nataraja of the 
Tan j ore temple is evident in the tombs of the Pathan kings 
and in the dome of the Taj Mahall. 

Nor is it surprising that the great political and social up- 
heaval caused by the Muhammadan conquest should create 
a revolution in the technical traditions of Indian art. Paint- 
ing and sculpture were specialised branches of Hindu temple 

329 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

architecture ; but when the higher ranks of Hindu painters 
and sculptors — ^those who painted or sculptured the sacred 
images — shared the common fate of Indian craftsmen and 
became Muhammadan slaves, such specialisation would to a 
great extent cease ; for neither figure-painting nor sculpture 
was allowed by the strict law of Islam. The painters and 
sculptors would for the most part become builders and designers 
of buildings, and thus Indo-Muhammadan building traditions 
formed a new synthesis of Hindu art. Neither is it surprising 
that imder these political and social conditions the new syn- 
thesis should absorb the vital impulse of Indo-Aryan culture, 
or that Indo-Muhammadan building should exhibit an intense 
energy and vitality while the older Indo-Aryan tradition 
which survived in Southern India became more and more 
decadent and relapsed into the morbid growth of the temples 
of Halebid. The victors in the political field soon controlled 
the richest resources of the economic and intellectual wealth 
of India ; the older Hinduism was rapidly disintegrating while 
Islam was gaining strength at its expense. The more conserva- 
tive of Brahman thinkers who refused to ally themselves with 
their new rulers might devote themselves to the conservation 
of their ancient traditions, but it is evident from the artistic 
record of later Hinduism that while they succeeded in maintain- 
ing outward forms and ritualistic practices they failed to 
preserve the creative vigour which Hinduism showed before 
the Muhammadan conquest. 

It is very significant that during this process of development 
Islam in India was in a state of almost complete isolation, 
spiritually and intellectually, from the rest of the Miihammadan 
world. 

From the twelfth century onward the M^ihammadans of 
India, to whatever sect or race they might belong, though 
they professed a nominal spiritual allegiance to the Khalifate, 
were virtually subject to the authority of their own rulers in 
spiritual as well as in temporal matters ; and with very few 
exceptions these rulers entirely ignored the direct representa- 
tives of the Prophet in Mesopotamia or Egypt. The Sultan 



I 



EFFECT OF MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST 

of Delhi might defer to the judgment of the 'Ulamas on 
questions of doctrine or Muhammadan law, but as soon as 
Islam began to adapt itself to its Indian environment a strong 
Indian party was formed at court whose interpretation of the 
true faith would have seemed rank heresy to the orthodox 
doctors of Baghdad or Cairo. With very few exceptions the 
prayers in Indian mosques were said in the name of the reign- 
ing Sultan, instead of in the name of the Khalif. The name 
of the latter did not, as a rule, appear on any Indian coinage. 
Firuz Shah created a precedent by acknowledging the temporal 
authority of the Khalif and by sending some of his proselytes 
to Mekka, but his personal influence could not divert the main 
current of Muhammadan thought in India, which continued 
to receive numerous tributaries from the ancient sources of 
Indo-Aryan culture as its territorial conquests gradually 
extended further and further. It was more especially in the 
provincial centres that the tendency of Indian Muhammadanism 
to differentiate itself from the Western forms of the faith 
began to manifest itself. 

In studying the relationship between Islam and Hinduism 
we must not neglect to take into account the fundamental 
differences of thought and doctrine which separated the two 
main sectarian groups of Islam — differences which had their 
original starting-point soon after the death of the Prophet. 
In the conventional sectarian sense the differences between 
Sunnis and Shiahs are centred in the dispute regarding the 
succession to the Khalifate. The Sunnis maintain the validity 
of the election of the first four Khalifs, the four friends of 
Muhammad : the Shiahs denounce the latter as usurpers and 
assert the claims of Ali, who married Fatima, the daughter of 
the Prophet, and was the father of the Shiah martyrs, Hasan 
and Husain. But the psychological differences between the 
two sects went much deeper. The Sunnis were originally the 
orthodox disciples of Muhammad, taking their stand upon the 
text of the Quran and the body of canonical doctrine {Sunna) 
which contained its recognised commentaries, and regarding 
with horror the least attempt to bring an external light to 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

bear upon the exegesis of the Prophet's revelations. The 
nucleus of the Sunni sect, first formed by Arabs only, gradually 
attracted to itself Turks, Afghans, and people of other races 
who at the time of the Hegira were in a primitive stage of 
religious culture. In the ardour of their new-found faith they 
were intolerant of any views but those of their own religious 
teachers. The Prophet's denunciation of idolatry made them 
furious iconoclasts. His promise of Paradise to the soldiers 
of Islam who died for the cause was sufficient justification 
for indiscriminate slaughter of the infidels. They banned any 
paintings of animate beings as idolatrous. 

The Shiahs, the dissenting sect, though originally of the 
same race as the Sunnis, rallied to their side the converts which 
Islam gained by compulsion or persuasion from the older and 
more highly developed religious systems of Asia, and absorbed 
into their own teaching a great deal of the mysticism of Aryan 
and Indo- Aryan religion ; so that the dividing line between 
a follower of Zoroaster and a Persian Shiah, or between an 
orthodox Hindu and an Indian Shiah, was more a question of 
ritual than of esoteric religious doctrine. The Shiah was a 
philosopher, the Sunni a dogmatist. The Sufism of Persian 
Musalmans was a development of Shiah philosophy. The 
Sunnis had no desire to go beyond a literal interpretation of 
the law, 

Persian Musalmans were mostly Shiahs ; likewise Hindus 
of the higher castes when they embraced Islam. The Turki 
and Afghan conquerors of India were nominally Sunnis, but 
were generally only bigoted in their attachment to fighting 
and plunder. In religion they were opportunists. But the 
racial distinctions between Sunni and Shiah were always 
subject to modification by educational influences, Firuz Shah 
was a strict Sunni in spite of his Rajput mother, because his 
religious education was in the hands of Sunni teachers. The 
language and literature of the Sunnis were Arabic, and all 
Muhammadans whose religious teaching was confined to the 
Arabic schools would in ordinary circumstances be Sunni. 
Thus the Abyssinian Musalman was a Sunni. The Mogul 



EFFECT OF MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST 

who adopted Persian culture was generally a Shiah. The 
fact that the court language of Musalman India was Persian 
partly accounted for the leanings of Muhammadan India 
towards the Shiah sect, though the sympathies of cultured 
Hindus would naturally tend in that direction. 

The typical Sunni of the cultured classes, like Firuz Shah, 
was often deeply religious and had a high sense of duty towards 
his fellow-Muslims ; but his ideas of humanity and justice 
towards ' infidels ' were as limited as those of the most intolerant 
Brahman towards the ' impure.' He was uncompromising in 
his attitude towards Hinduism in general, both in its esoteric 
and popular aspects. The internal differences of Islam helped 
to shape the course of political events in India, though perhaps 
the Western historian is generally inclined to exaggerate their 
importance. The Sunni faction in the Muslim courts, recruited 
by a constant influx of foreign muUas and military adventurers 
— Arabs, Abyssinians, Turks, and others — helped to keep alive 
the fierce sectarian and racial rancour of the first Muhammadan 
invasions. The Sunnis referred contemptuously to Indian 
Shiahs and to the Mogul mercenaries of the same sect as 
' foreigners ' and ' new Musalmans,' implying thereby that 
they were heathen and heretics. But the record of the 
struggles between the numerous Musalman kingdoms into 
which Hindustan and the Dekhan were split up in the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries does not warrant the assumption 
that religious fanaticism was the principal motive of the 
disputes. Talboys Wheeler is hardly justified in describing 
the process of dismemberment which the Delhi Empire under- 
went in the time of Muhammad Tughlak and afterwards as 
" the Shiah revolt." Sunni fought with Shiah to obtain 
political mastery and to gather the spoils of war — not to assert 
the superiority of his own religious formula. The bigoted 
Sunni Sultan was as ready as his more tolerant Shiah rival to 
accept the help of the idolatrous Hindu raja when it was 
useful to him in crushing a Musalman opponent. He was only 
more unscrupulous in his conduct towards his Hindu allies 
when the victory was won, as the rajas of the Dekhan learned 

333 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

from many bitter experiences. It was the hopeless mis- 
government of the Delhi Sultans and the fundamental difference 
between the political ideals of Islam and Aryavarta which 
provoked the revolt of the Dekhan and drove the Hindu 
rajas into the Shiah camp. 



334 




CHAPTER V 

BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

HE province of Gaur, which included all Bihar and 
Bengal from Allahabad eastward, was one of the 
first to break away from the Delhi Empire. Twelve 
years before the death of Muhammad Tughlak, or in 1338, 
Malik Fakhr-ud-din, an officer in the provincial army, assas- 
sinated the Governor and proclaimed himself Srdtan ; but 
after a short reign was supplanted by a fellow-officer, 'Ala-ud- 
din, who was assassinated a few months aftervi^ards. The 
kingdom was then for a time split up into two parts, each 
with an independent ruler. Firuz Shah made an ineffectual 
attempt to recover the province. In 1345 Shams-ud-din 
Ilyas, who seems to have been a naval officer, assassinated his 
master and founded the Purbiya dynasty of Bengal. In 1392 
a Hindu zamindar. Raja Kans, seized the throne, and his son, 
having embraced Islam, ruled for seventeen years under the 
name of Jalal-ud-din. 

Ferishta's account of the latter's conversion is very significant 
of the state of religious feeling amongst the ruling classes of 
Gaur at that time. After the death of Raja Kans, who though 
a Hindu appears to have been accepted as their ruler without 
demur by the Muhammadan officers of the army as soon as 
he had proved himself the better soldier, his son, Jitmal, 
called together all the officers of State and expressed a desire 
to become a Musalman, adding that if they would not acknow- 
ledge him as their sovereign on those terms he was prepared 
to hand over the throne to his brother. His officers declared 
that they were disposed to accept him as their king without 
any reference to the religion he might choose to adopt. " So 
that several learned men among the Mahomedans of that 

335 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

country were summoned to witness Raja Jeetmul renounce 
the Hindoo religion and profess that of the Moslems. He was 
at the same time entitled Julal-ood-Deen ; and after ascending 
the throne, he ruled with such justice that he became entitled 
to the appellation of the Nowsherwan of the age. He reigned 
with great splendour for a period of seventeen years." ^ The 
army of Gaur at that time contained a large proportion of 
Hindus. Ferishta mentions that one of the Purbiya Sultans 
enlisted 5000 Hindu footmen as his body-guard. ^ 

The rest of the history of the Muhammadan dynasties of 
Gaur until the time of Sher Shah (1539-1545) has little interest ; 
but the architecture of the capital is good evidence that Muham- 
madan culture in Gaur, as in other parts of India, was a graft 
upon the old Hindu stock and not an exotic transplanted from 
Arabia to Indian soil. The temples of Hindu Lakhnauti were 
destroyed so effectually by the first Sunni iconoclasts that 
hardly anything but their foundations can now be traced. 
Yet in all essential characteristics they grew up again in the 
mosques of Muhammadan Gaur. Except in the Arabic in- 
scriptions carved upon the walls, the mosques bear not the 
faintest trace of inspiration other than Indo- Aryan. The 
domes and arches are Indian Buddhist, not ' Saracenic' The 
arch with radiating voussoirs, which Fergusson assumes to be 
a foreign importation and makes the basis of his arbitrary 
classification of ' styles,' does not appear in the earlier build- 
ings : its spontaneous development from the traditional forms 
of Magadhan temple architecture can be traced step by step 
in successive buildings as the local craftsmen became accus- 
tomed to the symbolism of the Muslim mihrdh and adapted 
it to the new structural conditions created by Muslim ritual. 
There could not be a worse method of writing history than to 
ignore the inner moving spirit of artistic modes of expression 
and determine their traditional character by a technical pro- 
cess such as the construction of arches. 

The technical character of the buildings of Gaur was deter- 
mined by the fact that Bengal is a brick-making coimtr}'', and 

^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. iv, p. 337. ^ Ibid., p. 340. 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

if we would trace the origin of the building processes of the 
Magadha country we must first look to the ancient home of 
the Aryan city-builders, for the lower valley of the Ganges 
was in all probability in communication with Mesopotamia 
when Aryan kings ruled in Babylon in the second millennium 
before Christ. The position of Gaur made it a naval port as 
well as a land fortress, and we learn from Ferishta that the 
Muhammadans of Bengal were in communication with those 
of the west coast in Malwa and Gujerat. Further evidence of 
this fact is afforded by indications of Bengali craftsmanship 
in Muhammadan brick buildings of those provinces. 

Between Delhi and the city of Gaur was another province — 
one of the five which belonged to the ancient Gaur kingdom — 
stretching along the Ganges from Kanauj to Bihar, with its 
capital at Jaunpur. At the end of the fourteenth century this 
also became independent of the Delhi Sultans, and remained 
so, tmder the Sharki or ' Eastern ' dynasty, for about a cen- 
tury. During this time Jaunpur became a great centre of 
Muhammadan ciilture. The extent to which the latter was 
indebted to its Indian environment is evidenced by the noble 
mosques and other buildings with which the capital was 
adorned by Indian master-builders, Hindu and Musalman, 
under the patronage of the Sharki Sultans, The finest of the 
mosques, the Jami' Masjid, was completed in the reign of 
Husain Shah (1452-1478), whose memory is still cherished in 
Bengal for his efforts to reconcile the religious differences of 
the Hindu and Musalman communities. He was a great 
patron of vernacular literature as well as of vernacular art. 
By his orders one of the Hindu courtiers, Maladhar Vasu, 
. made what is said to be the first translation of the Bhagavata 
i from Sanskrit into Bengali.^ Apparently Brahman influence 
up to this time had prevented the sacred text being popularised 
in the vulgar tongue, from the same motives which made the 
, Christian hierarchy oppose the translations of the Bible. He 
.jalso ordered a translation of the Mahabharata to be made.^ 

i ^ Dinesh Chandra Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature, p. 222. 
' 2 i})i(i_^ p. 202. 

Y 337 



^ 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

it must not, however, be understood that the Indian masses 
up to this time had been denied direct access to their own 
sacred texts. The Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the 
Puranas were familiar to every Indian villager, and the great 
religious revivals of which Sankaracharya, Ramanuja, Chai- 
tanya, and other Brahmans were the leaders were continually 
breaking down the caste barriers which prevented Sudras and 
others from entering the Sanskrit Tdls, in which special 
religious instruction was given. The knowledge of Sanskrit 
was thus widely diffused among all classes of Hindus. Husain 
Shah's intention was to render the masterpieces of Indo- Aryan 
literature accessible to himself and to his co-religionists who 
were ignorant of the classical languages of India. According 
to tradition Husain Shah was also the originator of a religious 
cult which sought to unite Musalmans and Hindus in divine 
worship by using a common name for the Deity compounded 
of a Sanskrit word, Satya, and an Arabic word, Pir.^ Satya- 
Narayana, a synonym of Vishnu, had been worshipped in 
Bengal from time immemorial. Pir was the Arabic equivalent 
for the Hindu conception of the Supreme Spirit. The religious i 
literature of Bengal has preserved, says Mr Dinesh Chandra 
Sen, several poems dedicated to the worship of Satya-Pir. 
The Muhammadan colleges of Jaunpur may therefore be said , 
to have assisted in preparing the way for the great Vaishnava ■ 
revival in the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Chai- 
tanya's ecstatic fervour roused even pious Musalmans to join 
the crowds which went through the villages of Bengal chanting 
the praises of Krishna. 

It is also significant that Jaunpur was one of the centres of 
the Mahdawi movement in the middle of the same century. | 
The Shaikh 'Alai was a Bengali Musalman.^ Akbar's chief i 
counsellor in religious matters, Shaikh Mubarak, had attached ' 
himself in his early days to an Afghan Musalman preacher 
of the Jaunpur school, Miyan Abdulla. Husain Shah was 

^ Dinesh Chandra Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature, 

P- 797- 

^ Blochmann, Am-i-Akbart, Introduction, p. v. 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI ^EMPIRE 

Akbar's forerunner, and the latter's religious brotherhood, the 
Din-Ilahi, was an organised effort to develop the teaching of 
Islam on the lines of the Jaunpur school. 

Another of the provinces of the Delhi Empire to set up an 
independent Muhammadan dynasty in the stormy days of 
Muhammad Tughlak was that of Kulbarga, in the Dekhan. 
The founder, Hasan Gangu Bahmani (Brahmani), was the 
servant of Gangu, a Brahman astrologer who enjoyed high 
favour at the Delhi court. He had risen to the chief command 
of the army of the Dekhan when the general revolt of Hindus 
and Musalmans caused by Muhammad Tughlak's tyranny 
gave him an opportunity of making a kingdom for himself. 
Having defeated the imperial forces with the aid of the Raja 
of Telingana, he assumed sovereignty as the first Muhammadan 
king of the Dekhan at Kulbarga in 1347, ^^'^ 'took the name of 
Bahmani, it is said, in gratitude to his former patron, who 
became his Finance Minister. This, observes Ferishta, was the 
first time that a Brahman had accepted office in the service of 
a Muhammadan sovereign. Before that time Brahmans had 
held aloof from public affairs and passed their lives in the 
duties of religion and in the study of the Vedas, never accept- 
ing an official position, though as physicians, astronomers, 
philosophers, and historians they had sometimes associated 
themselves with the ruling powers. After Gangu's time the 
Brahmans of the Dekhan controlled the finances of the Musal- 
man kings. ^ The former statement, though not exactly correct, 
may be accepted as another indication of the gradual reconcilia- 
tion of Hinduism with the ruling powers which had its beginning 
in the fourteenth century. 

The Bahmani kingdom was coterminous with M^aharashtra, 
or the Mahratta country. It extended from Berar on the 
north to the Krishna river on the south ; on the west it was 
bounded by the Ghats. The Hindu state Telingana, or the 
Telugu country, barred its access to the east coast. South of 
the Krishna river the remnant of the Hindu kingdoms formed 
a strong coalition under the Rajas of Vijayanagar, which for 
^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. ii, p. 292. 

339 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

a long time held the Musalman at bay. The royal mosque at 
Kulbarga, the capital, is a fine example of the creative genius 
of the Hindu craftsman ; it marks an important stage in the 
evolutionary process of M^hammadan architecture in the 
Dekhan, which reached its culmination i.: the magnificent 
tombs, mosques, and palaces of Bijapur. The covered court- 
yard of the Kulbarga mosque is an adaptation of the traditional 
Indo-Aryan plan of the hundred- or thousand-pillared halls 
used for public assemblies or royal audiences. 

The dynastic history of the Dekhan from the time of the 
founding of the Bahmani dynasty until its extinction in 1525 
is mainly a record of local wars between Musalman rivals or 
Hindu states, often marked by great ferocity and by indis- 
criminate slaughter of non-combatants, but not more interest- 
ing historically than those which occurred when Hindu rajas 
were the only combatants and settled their disputes according 
to more chivalrous rules of warfare. Kulbarga remained the 
chief Muhammadan capital until 1422, when the Bahmani 
court was removed to Bidar, about sixty miles to the north- 
east. At the end of the fifteenth century the centre of Muham- 
madan power in the Dekhan shifted to Bijapur under the 
Turkish dynasty of the 'Adil Shahis. 

An offshoot of the Bahmani kingdom was that of Ahmad- 
nagar, founded in 1490 by Ahmad Nizam Shah, the son of a 
Brahman convert whose father having been taken prisoner 
by the army of Ahmad Shah Bahmani had won for himself a 
high position at the court of Kulbarga. The Ahmadnagar or 
Nizam Shahi dynasty lasted till 1595. 

Gujerat, Malwa, and Khandesh were the three Musalman 
states lying to the south and south-east of Rajputana which, 
from the end of the fourteenth century, had separate dynasties 
independent of the Sultanate of Delhi. The founder of the 
Gujerati dynasty, Muzaft'ar Shah, was the son of a Rajput 
who having been taken prisoner saved his life by accepting 
the Muslim faith. There was consequently an undying feud 
between the Gujerati rulers and all the Rajput princes who 
had not bowed their necks to the Musalman yoke. The two 

340 




23. Interior of the J ami' Masjid, Ahmad abad 



340 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

MtLhammadan dynasties of Malwa and Gujerat at first kept 
up very friendly relations, but when Hushang Ghuri, the 
second of the Malwa line, was suspected of having poisoned 
his father, Muzaffar Shah marched against him, took Hushang's 
capital, Dhar, and made him a prisoner. Muzaffar found it 
politic to reinstate him on the throne, but from that time 
there were frequent hostilities between the two states, though 
occasionally they combined against their comm_on enemy, the 
Rana of Chitor. 

Muzaffar Shah's capital was the ancient Hindu city Anhil- 
war, but his grandson and successor, Ahmad Shah, moved to 
Karnavati, which was then renamed Ahmadabad. Ahmad 
(1412-1443), the most distinguished of his line, was a doughty 
warrior. He upheld the military prestige of his Kshatriya 
ancestry both in contests with the Hindu princes of his own 
race, the Rajas of Idar, Jhalawar, and others, and with his 
namesake Ahmad Shah Bahmani of Kulbarga. But for the 
greater part of his long reign he was occupied with a series of 
campaigns against his grandfather's adversary. Sultan Hushang 
of Malwa, who sought to avenge his former defeat by combin- 
ing with Ahmad Shah's Rajput enemies and with the rival 
Muhammadan state, Khandesh. 

Ahmad Shah, however, is more entitled to be remembered 
as a great Rajput city-builder than as a Musalman sultan. 
The splendid city he laid out according to the ancient Indo- 
Aryan tradition was divided into 360 mahallas, or wards. The 
plan was based upon the village unit, each mahalla being self- 
contained and enclosed by walls. The principal streets, the 
Rajamargas and Mahakalas, were wide enough to admit ten 
carriages abreast, and the houses were generally substantially 
built of bricks and had tiled roofs. The royal mosque, the 
J ami' Masjid, one of the most beautiful in India, was an adapta- 
tion to Muhammadan ritual of the contemporary Rajput 
temple. It resembles very closely, both in structure and in 
ornamentation, the Jaina temple of Ranpur, which the Rana 
of Chitor, Kumbha, Ahmad's most formidable antagonist, 
was building about the same time. Fergusson, not generally 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

enthusiastic over Hindu art, finds more poetry in the temple 
than in the mosque, though he guards himself by adding, 
" There is a sobriety about the plan of the mosque which may, 
after all, be in better taste." ^ 

It is noticeable how in the Ranpur temple the Hindu 
builders seem to have tried to avoid offence to Musalman 
susceptibilities by omitting the usual sciilptured ornamenta- 
tion on the exterior of the domes. Perhaps many of them 
had been previously employed in building mosques and had 
adopted the Musalman rule of leaving the exterior of the 
domes without carving of any kind, just as Hindu temple- 
builders of the present day often take suggestions from the 
* Gothic ' and ' Classic ' buildings of the Public Works Depart- 
ment.^ But many Jaina and Hindu teachers both before and 
after the Muhammadan invasions had condemned the ritualistic 
use of images as contrary to the true spirit of Vedic philosophy. 
Probably it was with the object of reconciling Indo- Aryan 
religion with Islam that Jaidev in the thirteenth century and 
Ramanand in the fourteenth were as emphatic as the muUas 
in denouncing idolatry. Chaitanya's mission would not have 
been so indulgently regarded by Muhammadan officials if he 
had not avoided giving offence on this point. Kabir, the Hindu 
weaver, was so strong in his protest against image-worship 
that Muhammadans disputed with Hindus for the honour of 
performing his funeral rites. Nanak, the first guru of the 
Sikhs, taught the vanity of image-worship ; the tenth guru, 
Govind Singh, absolutely prohibited it. 

Thus, although Hinduism as a whole clung tenaciously to 
its ancient tradition of popular symbolism, the Hindu master- 
builders, who were the interpreters of the Sastras of temple 
craftsmanship, were not uninfluenced by Islamic doctrine, and 
in the districts where Muhammadanism was strong the manda- 
pam of a temple built after the fourteenth century can hardly 
be distinguished from the porch of a mosque. On the sacred 

^ Indian Architecture, 2nd edit., vol. ii, p. 232. 

3 It must be said to the credit of the Indian master-builders that their 
adaptations are generally more Gothic and Classic in spirit than the originals. 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

hill of Palitana most of the domes of Jaina temples are what 
archaeologists describe as ' Pathan,' though they have not 
the remotest connection with Pathan craftsmanship. They 
are only Hindu domes with a plain instead of a sculptured 
exterior, illustrating the process by which the Hindu captives 
of Musalman sovereigns from the time of Mahmud of Ghazni 
adapted Indo-Aryan building traditions to the ritual of Islam 
and created what is misnamed ' Pathan ' architecture. 

The territory comprised in the Musalman kingdom of 
Gujerat is particularly rich in remains of Indo-Aryan civilisa- 
tion, both before and after Muhammadan times. The Muham- 
madans, as in other provinces, destroyed the temples, only to 
rebuild them as mosques. Under the independent Musalman 
dynasty the traditions of Rajput polity, which had been 
suppressed so long as Gujerat was a province of the Delhi 
Empire, were revived. Ahmad Shah followed the Indo-Aryan 
practice of establishing his soldiers upon the land instead of 
paying them wages as mercenaries. Outside the chief towns 
Hinduism continued to flourish, and the Musalman land- 
system did not disturb to a great extent the old relationship 
between the freehold ryotwari and the ruling power. 

Under Alimad Shah's successors Gujerat rose to be one of 
the most powerful of the Musalman kingdoms of Hindustan. 
Mahmud Begarah (1459-1511) reduced two of the strongest 
Rajput hill-fortresses, Girnar or Junaghar, and Champanir, 
which had held out for several centuries. The Musalman 
victor, stung perhaps by taunts reminding him of his Rajput 
ancestor's apostasy, was inflexible towards the two Hindu 
rajas when they fell into his hands. They were given the 
choice of accepting Islam or death. Girnar preferred to live ; 
Champanir and his minister, who were both wounded in the 
last desperate rush, after the dread sacrifice of Rajput royalty 
had been performed, suffered death. 

The Ranas of Chitor, with the flower of Rajput chivalry, 
which rallied under their banner, still kept up the struggle^ of 
centuries, and were at constant war with Gujerat or with 
Malwa, or with both, swooping down from the hills of Mewar 

343 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

when occasion offered and returning to the shelter of their 
ancestral strongholds, sometimes laden with the spoils of 
victory, sometimes with the avenging Musalman in hot pursuit. 
In 1418 Kumbha Rana defeated the combined armies of 
Gujerat and Malwa, In 1440 Mahmud Khilji of Malwa made 
a desperate assault upon the Chitor citadel, but was driven 
back by Kumbha Rana, who built the magnificent Jaya 
stambha, 122 feet high, to celebrate his victory. This long 
period of hostility was, however, broken in the sixteenth 
century when Ratan Singh of Chitor and Bahadur Shah of 
Gujerat joined in assisting the Rajputs of Malwa to put an 
end to the impossible rule of the Afghan Sultan Mahmud. 

In the middle of the fifteenth century Gujerat and Malwa 
played the most important part in the politics of Hindustan, 
for the Sultanate of Delhi shrank into a second-rate Muham- 
madan power after the sack of the city by Timur. In 1509 
Sikandar Lodi of Delhi sent an embassy with rich presents to 
Ahmadabad to congratulate Mahmud Shah Begarah on his 
victories over the infidel — ^the first occasion on which the Delhi 
Sultanate had recognised the independence of Gujerat. The 
fame of the Rajput Sultan even reached to the court of Persia, 
and in 15 11 Shah Ismail sent a Turkish officer on a (:ompli- 
mentary mission to Ahmadabad ; but Mahmud died before the 
envoy could obtain an audience.^ 

The long reign of Mahmud Shah Begarah is also memorable 
for the appearance of the Portuguese upon Indian soil — ^the 
first Europeans who had gained a footing there since the days 
of Alexander the Great. In 1498 the three ships of Vasco da 
Gama, after a perilous voyage round the Cape, arrived off the 
coast of Malabar, and Don Vasco and his officers, bearing a 
letter from King Bmanuel of Portugal, were received first by 
the Brahman ministers of the Zamorin of Calicut in the mauda- 
pam of the temple, and afterwards by the Zamorin himself at 
his palace. But the not unnatural suspicions aroused by the 
appearance of the mysterious foreigners and the high-handed 
action of the Portuguese in seizing some fishermen as hostages 
1 Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. iv, p. 77. 

344 




25. Tower of Victory, Chitor 



344 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

led to hostilities, and Vasco da Gama was compelled to 
return to Lisbon with the loss of two-thirds of his crews, only 
bringing his Indian captives to bear witness to his great 
discovery. 

A second and larger expedition under Alvarez Cabral suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the Zamorin's permission to establish a 
factory at Calicut, but this was burnt down by an exasperated 
mob when the Portuguese appropriated the cargo of a Musal- 
man merchant ship. Cabral by way of reprisals bombarded 
Calicut and burnt the Indian shipping lying in the harbour. 
He then opened negotiations with some of the neighbouring 
Hindu princes through a Brahman yogi, and with their aid 
obtained the merchandise he wanted. The yogi, it is said, 
afterwards became a Christian. 

The subsequent conduct of the Portuguese seems to have 
justified their association in the minds of the inhabitants of 
Malabar with the native pirates who at that time were the 
terror of the Indian seas. Vasco da Gama returned in 1502 
with a well-armed fleet, and promptly began to imitate the 
military and naval code of the pagan by burning and sinking 
every Musalman ship, armed or unarmed, he met — sparing 
neither women nor children except a few who were rescued 
to be baptized as Christians. The Raja of Cochin, impressed 
by the Portuguese defiance of the Musalman power, allowed 
them to build a fort and factory at Cochin, and acknowledged 
himself as a vassal of King Emanuel. This brought upon the 
Raja an attack from the Zamorin of Calicut and his allies, 
which was, however, unsuccessful. From that time the Portu- 
guese began to be firmly established in their Indian possessions 
under the famous viceroy Alfonso da Albuquerque, who seized 
Goa and drove out a colony of traders planted there by the 
Sultan of Bijapur. The Portuguese territory was protected 
on the land side by the almost impassable forests and mountains 
of the Western Ghats, and thus was admirably adapted for 
colonisation by a strong naval power. 

Naturally the Musalman authorities at Gujerat were not 
pleased with the proceedings of the European intruders and 

345 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

did their best to support their co-rehgionists. The Mamluk 
Sultan of Egypt, whose commerce with India was interrupted 
by the Portuguese rovers, fitted out a great fleet in the Red 
Sea and sent a message to the Sultan of Gujerat requesting 
his co-operation in exterminating the infidel who " had usurped 
the dominion of the ocean." Mahmud Begarah, whose sea- 
ports were threatened by the Portuguese, ordered his admiral 
to act in concert with the Egyptian Sultan's fleet. In the 
first engagement, off the port of Choul, south of Bombay, the 
Portuguese flag-ship was sunk, and, according to the Musalman 
historian, " three or four thousand Portuguese infidels were 
at the same time sent to the infernal regions." The Viceroy 
of Goa thereupon sailed with the rest of his ships to Diu and 
took his revenge upon the pagans by practically annihilating 
the Egyptian or Turkish fleet. The Gujerati Sultans after 
this demonstration of the naval strength of Portugal thought 
it politic to make terms with the enemies of Islam. 

Bahadur Shah lost most of his territory in a war with the 
Moguls, and in return for some assistance rendered by the 
Portuguese in recovering it he allowed the latter to build a 
fort upon the island of Diu. Subsequently, however, he was 
so annoyed by the depredations of the Portuguese armed 
merchantmen that he sent an embassy to Constantinople 
to ask for the assistance of a Turkish fleet in expelling the 
Europeans, but before the fleet arrived he was killed by the 
Portuguese in an affray in the harbour of Diu. In a subse- 
quent siege the fort was heroically defended by the Portuguese 
against the Turkish forces. The Turks only succeeded in 
alienating their Indian allies by their brutal behaviour and 
were compelled to withdraw. Dynastic troubles and a suc- 
cession of incompetent rulers in the sixteenth century reduced 
Gujerat to a state of anarchy. In 1572 Muzaffar Shah III 
abdicated, and his Sultanate was added to the empire of the 
Moguls. 

We must now go back to the early history of the two other 
independent Musalman states which pla3^ed a more or less 
prominent part in the events of the fourteenth and fifteenth 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

centuries, Malwa and Kliandesh. The Malwa dynasty was 
Afghan by race and Sunni in religious dogma, the founder, 
Dilawar Shah, claiming relationship with the Ghuri dynasty 
of Delhi and with the Sultan Shahab-ud-din of Damascus. 
Racial antagonism would therefore account for the frequent 
quarrels with the Rajput dynasty of Gujerat, without regard 
to the sectarian differences between the two Musalman houses. 
Malwa was one of the earliest and most important centres of 
Indo- Aryan culture, its great university at Ujjain being already 
famous in the days of the Buddha. The province was con- 
quered by Ghiyas-ud-din early in the fourteenth century. It 
was ruled from Delhi by provincial governors until 1401, when 
Dilawar Ghuri seized the opportunity of the overthrow of the 
Delhi Sultans by Timur to declare his independence. 

The first seat of the Musalman government was Dhar, the 
ancient Hindu capital. But Hushang Shah, the second Sultan 
(1405-1432), after his defeat by Muzaffar Shah of Gujerat 
removed his court to Mandu, a noble plateau about thirty 
miles in circumference separated from the surrounding plains 
by deep ravines and high cliffs, easily made impregnable by 
artificial defences. It was, like Chitor, one of those natural 
fortresses characteristic of that part of India, extremely diffi- 
cult of access for an enemy, but surrounded by fertile plains 
which seemed designed by the Creator for the development of 
the Aryan patriarchal ideal and the cult of Vishnu — ^the 
Protector of the Aryan people — ^where the herdsmen could 
graze their cattle and the ryots till their lands around the 
citadel — ^the sacred hill — ^while the Kshatriya warriors kept 
watch and ward from the fortress walls and gopurams. The 
extent of the plateau and the broken country at the foot of 
it made the complete investment of the fortress impossible 
except for a very large army. There was a plentiful supply 
both of water and forage within the fortress walls. 

Malwa, besides its sacred hill, had also — like every Indo- 
Aryan state — its sacred river, the Narbada, along whose banks 
Vedic rishis had meditated in their rock-cut hermitages, 
succeeded by many generations of pious Hindus, Jains, and 

347 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Buddhists. Here also Muhammadan pus, infected by the 
same religious spirit, took up their solitary abode, holding 
communion with the Deity Who regards not forms and cere- 
monies. At Mandu Hushang's Indian master-builders built 
him a splendid fort and palace, a J ami' Masjid, dharmasalas 
and reservoirs, and a royal city such as their forefathers had 
built for many successive Indo-Arj'-an dynasties, only adapting 
themselves to the puritanical sentiment of the Sunni sect by 
the strictest reticence in decorative detail, so that, in archaeo- 
logical parlance, the style of the buildings is said to be ' Pathan.' ^ 
Hushang directly after the death of Muzaffar Shah of Gujerat 
took advantage of dynastic disputes in that country to lay 
waste the territory of his Musalman neighbour and thus 
revenge himself for his former defeat. Ahmad Shah, as soon 
as he had seciired himself on the throne of Ahmadabad, took 
up the challenge, and henceforth there was war to the knife 
between the Afghan and Rajput rulers, the Sunni Sultan 
sometimes supporting Ahmad's Hindu opponents, but leaving 
theni to their fate when it seemed politic to do so, and some- 
times playing from his own hand. In 1422 Ahmad Shah 
invaded Malwa and laid siege to Mandu, investing it closely 
on the northern side, but not being able to surround it com- 
pletely owing to the difficult character of the hilly country. 
Hushang accordingly took an opportunity to slip unperceived 
through one of the southern gates, and in the disguise of 
a merchant set out with a picked body of horsemen to pro- 
cure the war-elephants which he greatly needed from the 
Raja of Jajnagar, in the Orissa country, famous for its elephant 
forests, and more than a month's journey from Mandu. To 
barter for the elephants he took with him some fine horses to 
suit the Raja's fancy and a quantity of valuable silk and cotton 
goods. When the pretended merchants arrived an altercation 
took place between them and the Raja's servants, and in a 

1 Fergusson classifies pre-Muhammadan architectvire according to sectarian 
distinctions — ' Buddliist,' ' Jain/ and ' Hindu.' To be consistent Indo- 
Muhammadan buildings should be classified as ' Sunni ' and ' Shiak ' instead 
of ' Pathan/ ' Mogul/ etc. 

3+8 



1 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

sudden thunderstorm which came on when the Raja arrived 
the fine brocades and musHns were trampled upon and spoilt 
by the royal elephants. Hushang and his followers without 
hesitation sprang upon their horses, attacked the Raja's escort 
and made the Raja a prisoner. The Malwa Sultan then 
disclosed his identity, and the Raja was glad to purchase his 
release with seventy-five elephants, though Hushang insisted 
that he should accompany him as a hostage to the borders 
of his dominions, and the unhappy Raja was forced to part 
with a few more of his finest elephants before he got rid of his 
unwelcome visitor. 

On his return to Malwa after this exploit Hushang found 
that his capital was still holding out, but to insure against the 
risk of its falling before he could come to its relief he persuaded 
the Raja of Kehrla to join forces with him. The Sultan then 
seized the person of the Raja and took possession of his fort. 
After this second successful ruse he marched to Mandu and 
entered triumphantly by the southern gate while Ahmad Shah's 
forces were occupied on the northern side, the besiegers being 
ignorant of the Malwa Sultan's return until it was announced 
from the fortress walls by the blare of war-horns and the 
beating of drums. 

Ahmad Shah thereupon raised the siege of Mandu in disgust 
and marched southward toward Sarangpur through Ujjain ; 
but the adroit Afghan, taking a more direct route, arrived 
before him. Then to throw Ahmad off his guard Hushang 
wrote him a submissive note proposing that they should both 
desist from shedding Musalman blood and enter into negotia- 
tions for a lasting peace. Ahmad Shah fell into the trap. 
While the Malwa envoy was still in the Gujerati camp, Hushang 
made a sudden night attack upon it. The Malwa troops sur- 
rounded the royal pavilion, and Ahmad owed his life to the 
gallant defence of his Rajput body-guard, under the command 
of the Raja of Dankula, which enabled him to escape under 
cover of darkness and re-form his scattered army. At day- 
break Ahmad Shah with a picked body of Gujeratis fell upon 
the Malwa army while it was counting its spoil, and Sultan 

349 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Hushang was not only completely defeated, but lost a good 
number of the elephants he had stolen from Jajnagar and a 
considerable amount of treasure. 

During his thirty years' reign Sultan Hushang was perpetually 
at war, but though he gained some temporary successes by cun- 
ning and treachery he was not able to overcome any of his power- 
ful neighbours. When he was not engaged with his Gujerati rival 
he was fighting sometimes with the Dekhani Muhammadans under 
Ahmad Shah Bahmani, sometimes with those of Jaunpur under 
Ibrahim Shah Sharki, and sometimes with the Delhi Sultan. 
He died in 1432, and was buried at Hushangabad, a city he 
founded on the Narbada river ; but subsequentlj'- his body 
was conveyed to Mandu and reinterred there in the stone 
vault of a splendid mausoleum, from the sides of which, pious 
Musalmans declared, water miraculously oozed in the dry 
season only, as if the very rocks were lamenting the death of 
the doughty warrior who upheld the cause of Islam. In 1435 
the Ghuri dynasty of Malwa became extinct and the succession 
passed over to another Afghan dynasty, the Khilji, also con- 
nected with the Delhi Sultanate. The first Sultan, Mahmud 
Khilji (1436-1452), was famed as a patron of learning and 
founded several colleges in different parts of his kingdom for 
the study of philosophy and religion. ^ He continued the war 
against Gujerat, and once unsuccessfully besieged Delhi ; but 
he was chiefly occupied with campaigns against the Rana of 
Chitor and the Bahmani Sultans of the Dekhan. 

It is clear from the promiscuous character of these local 
wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that religious 
principles were seldom at stake. It was war for war's sake. 
Religious controversy made as good a pretext as any other 
for making war, but Shiah fought against Shiah and Sunni 
against Sunni. Hindus fought on one side or the other, 
according to circumstances. When Musalman war-lords were 
tired of fighting each other they joined in falling on the 
idolatrous Hindu; but outside the ranks of the fighting men 
Hindus and Musalmans for the most part lived peacefully 
^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. iv, p. 197. 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

together and learned to reconcile their religious differences. 
Racial animosities and political disputes were the principal 
causes of dissensions among the masses. 

In the beginning of the sixteenth century the Hindu Rajputs 
for a time regained possession of Mandu. The last Sultan of 
Malwa, Mahmud II (1510-1530), was under deep obligations 
to Medni Rai, an able Rajput chieftain, who had rendered 
invaluable assistance in securing his succession to the throne 
when many of the Muhammadan nobles had espoused the 
cause of his elder brother. As Mahmud's chief minister Medni 
Rai seems to have acted loyally and with conspicuous courage 
in a position of extreme difficulty. Mahmud, a brave soldier 
but a capricious and incompetent ruler, left the administration 
in his hands. Medni as a Hindu and Rajput was hated by 
the Arab, Persian, and Abyssinian officials of the Mandu court, 
who were at the same time poisoning the mind of the Sultan 
and plotting against his life. Medni's drastic measures in 
getting rid of them and replacing them by Rajputs whom he 
could trust infuriated the foreign Musalmans. At last they 
raised the standard of revolt and sent a petition to Sikandar 
Ivodi, the Delhi Sultan, stating that the idolaters had become 
virtually masters of the country and were defiling the mosques, 
while the Sultan Mahmud was a puppet in their hands and 
refused to hsten to his Muhammadan officers and subjects. 
It was expected, they said, that Medni Rai would soon depose 
the Sultan and place his own son upon the throne. They 
therefore begged the Delhi Sultan to send an army to which 
the faithful might rally, so that Sahib Khan, the brother of 
Mahmud, might be proclaimed Sultan of Malwa. 

Sikandar I^odi was persuaded to send an army of 12,000 
horsemen to assist the rebels, and Muzaffar Shah of Gujerat 
also invaded Malwa. In this dangerous situation Medni Rai 
proved himself equally skilful in war and in diplomacy. 
Accompanied by the {Sultan he marched against the Gujeratis 
and defeated them, forcing Muzaffar Shah to return to Ahmad- 
abad. At the same time he succeeded in promoting dissensions 
between the Malwa rebels and the Delhi Sultan's general, so 

351 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

that Sikandar lyodi recalled his army. Sultan Mahmud there- 
upon fell upon the rebel forces and dispersed them. Sahib 
Khan and his chief supporters made overtures for peace, which 
Mahmud, doubtless advised by Medni Rai, thought fit to 
accept, ceding to his brother several forts and giving him a 
substantial grant for his maintenance. 

The Sultan's confidence in his minister after these events 
was naturally increased ; but Medni Rai's difficulties were by 
no means lessened, for the Musalman officials' opportunities 
of squeezing the infidel grew smaller and smaller under the 
Rajput chieftain's strong administration. The friction between 
the Rajputs and the malcontent Musalmans led to frequent 
disturbances, and finally Ghalib Khan, a former governor of 
Mandu, took the opportunity when Mahmud was out hunting 
to shut the gates of the fortress and refuse admission to the 
royal party. The Sultan proceeded to invest the citadel, and 
with the aid of the loyal Rajputs Ghalib Khan was seized and 
executed. After this Medni Rai, says Ferishta, made a clean 
sweep of all Muhammadan officials, so that the whole of the 
offices of government were filled by Rajputs. 

At last the Sultan, though he had no reason to trust his 
intriguing Musalman courtiers, began to suspect the motives 
of his too powerful minister, and resolved to disband all his 
Rajput soldiers, to the number of 40,000. Not daring to meet 
Medni Rai face to face with such a proposal, he sent, according 
to the Indian custom when a servant is discharged for no 
fault, a basket with 40,000 packets of pan, directing Medni 
Rai to distribute them among his Rajput soldiers and disband 
them. This clumsy proceeding deeply wounded the proud 
Rajputs, who had several times proved their steadfast loyalty 
to their sovereign on the field of battle, and caused the greatest 
excitement among them. They sent a deputation to Medni 
Rai, their hereditary chief, proposing to remove the ungrateful 
Sultan and place his own son on the throne. The minister 
refused to listen to such a proposal, giving the very good reason 
that it would bring the united armies of Gujerat, Khandesh, 
and the Dekhan to the rescue of Sultan Mahmud. He pacified 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

his angry followers and advised them to appeal to the 
Sultan and beg him to reconsider his intention of discharging 
them. 

Mahmud, yielding at Medni Rai's intervention, agreed to 
cancel his orders, on condition that all the court appointments 
should in future be filled by Muhammadans, that discharged 
Musalman officials should be reinstated, that no Muhammadan 
women should be retained in Rajput zananas, and that no 
Hindu should hold any civil office at court. Medni Rai 
remained Prime Minister, but the insult the Rajput officers 
had received continued to rankle, and the relations between 
them and the Sultan began to be strained. At last Mahmud 
determined to get rid of Medni Rai and another of the Rajput 
chiefs, Salivahan, by assassination. The Musalman body- 
guard waylaid them ; Salivahan was killed, but Medni Rai 
escaped to his house covered with wounds. 

All the Rajputs in Mandu flew to arms, and attacked the 
Sultan in his palace ; but Mahmud with his body-guard fought 
with desperate courage and kept them at bay. They then 
withdrew to Medni Rai's house and begged him to put himself 
at their head. Medni refused, ordered his followers to retire 
to their quarters, and sent word to the Sultan that he was 
ready for the good of the State to lay down his life, if his 
Majesty thought that he should do so, and requested the 
Sultan's orders. Mahmud, foiled in his treacherous scheme, 
received Medni Rai into favour again, but the situation had 
become impossible for both sides, and it was not long before 
the shifty Sultan, accompanied only by his Master of the 
Horse, his favourite mistress, and a few followers, slipped out 
of Mandu by night and fled to Ahmadabad, relying on the 
assistance of the Gujerat Stdtan, Muzaffar Shah. The latter 
received the fugitives hospitably, and marched his army to 
attack the Rajputs at M^ndu. In the meantime Medni Rai, 
leaving garrisons at Mandu and other Malwa fortresses, had 
gone to Chitor to invoke the aid of the Rana Sanga. Muzaffar 
Shah laid siege to Mandu, and in 15 19 the hitherto impregnable 
fortress was taken by assault, the Rajputs resisting to the 

z 353 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

last, and sacrificing their women and children, according to 
their tradition, rather than allow them to become slaves of 
the Musalmans. 

Muzaffar Shah, having reinstated Mahmud on his throne, 
returned to Ahmadabad, leaving his army to continue the 
contest with Mahmtid's Rajput adversaries. Medni Rai at 
last returned with a great army led by Rana Sanga. Mahmud, 
against the advice of Asaf Khan, the Gujerat general, imme- 
diately gave battle, and headed a furious charge of the Gujerati 
cavalry against nearly 50,000 Rajput horse. The result was 
that the Gujerat army was almost annihilated. Asaf Khan's 
son and thirty other officers of rank were slain, and Mahmud, 
fighting like a lion until none of his body-guard were left, was 
severely wounded and taken prisoner. The Rana, with extra- 
ordinary magnanimity, ordered his wounds to be attended 
to, and when he had recovered sent him back to Mandu 
with an escort of a thousand Rajput horse. Thus for the 
second time a Muhammadan Sultan was placed on his throne 
by the chivalry of a Rajput warrior. 

Medni Rai and other Rajput chiefs retired to their ancestral 
domains, leaving the incorrigible Sultan to his own devices. 
Mahmud repaid Rana Sanga's generosit^^ by wantonly attack- 
ing his son, Ratan Singh, as soon as Babur's great victory 
over the Rajputs in 1527 gave him an opportunity. But his 
crowning act of folly was to alienate the sympathy of his 
Musalman allies in Gujerat. This occurred in 1525, when 
Bahadur Shah, the son of Muzaffar Shah, succeeded to the 
throne of Ahmadabad. Mahmud then lent his aid to the 
intrigues of a younger brother who had fled to Mandu for 
protection. Bahadur Shah thereupon marched into Malwa. 
Mahmud was soon forced to surrender, and was confined in the 
fortress of Champanir, but being suspected of further intrigues 
was soon afterwards put to death. Malwa was then annexed 
to the kingdom of Gujerat. Medni Rai died while bravely 
defending his ancestral fortress, Chanderi, against the assaults 
of the Moguls under Humayun. 
The great fortress of Mandu lives in Indian memory not so 

354 




26. Baz Bahadur and Rupmati 



354 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

much for the events of the stormy period above narrated, but 
for a romantic episode later on in the sixteenth century when 
Baz Bahadur, son of an Afghan governor appointed by Sher 
Shah Sur, had himself crowned as Sultan and for a time kept 
up a show of sovereignty. Baz Bahadur was extremely fond 
of music, and enamoured of a beautiful Hindu songstress, 
Rupmati, described by Muhammadan writers as the most 
lovely of India's womanhood ever seen. Her heau cavalier 
was, however, more successful in love than in war ; for having 
led his army to the siege of the fortress of Garrah he was caught 
in an ambuscade prepared by the followers of the Rani Durga,- 
vati, the Hindu princess who ruled the country. His army 
was practically annihilated, though he himself succeeded in 
escaping alone to Sarangpur. The quondam Sultan then gave 
up military adventures and solaced himself by passing his time 
among the hills of Malwa in the company of the fair musician, 
so that the loves of Baz Bahadur and Rupmati were sung by 
the local bards and became a favourite subject with Indian 
painters. One of the palaces at Mandu, with a beautiful 
prospect over the Narbada valley, and a pavilion higher up 
the hill, are named by tradition after the two lovers. 

In 1559 Akbar, hearing of the disordered state of the country, 
sent a Mogul army into Malwa. Baz Bahadur collected a 
small army and gallantly defended the remnant of his territory, 
but was defeated and compelled to take to the hills. The 
beautiful Rupmati fell into the hands of the Mogul general, 
who would have forced her into his harem ; but faithful to 
her old lover she took poison and died rather than ^deld to 
his threats and importunities. Baz Bahadur, tired of guerrilla 
warfare and a precarious life in the forests and hills, at length 
made submission to Akbar a,nd was given a command of two 
thousand horse. With the conquest of Gujerat Malwa was 
absorbed in the Mogul Empire, and Mandu ceased to play any 
considerable part in Indian political history. 

The history of Khandesh, a small Musalman kingdom in 
the extreme north of the Dekhan, formed by the lower part of 
the valley of the Tapti river and the districts of Berar, was 

355 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

associated with that of Gujerat and Malwa. Like Malwa the 
country was rich in monuments of Indo-Aryan civilisation 
and full of the memories of the long centuries before Muham- 
madan times. The record of the Arab, or Faruki, dynasty of 
Khandesh is chiefly interesting for the glimpse it gives of 
provincial Hfe in a typical Indo-Aryan state. At the close of 
the fourteenth century Khandesh was a province of the Delhi 
Empire, administered by two brothers, Malik Nasir Khan and 
Malik Iftikar, of the Faruki family, which claimed descent from 
the Klialif Omar. The former was the more energetic, and by 
unscrupulous diplomacy soon succeeded in ousting his brother 
from his possessions and in making himself independent by 
the aid of the neighbouring Muhammadan rulers who had 
already thrown off their allegiance to the Delhi v^ultanate. 

His first exploit as Governor had been to make himself master 
of the fort of Asirgarh, the hereditary castle of a Hindu chief- 
tain, Asa Ahir, in whose family it had remained for seven 
hundred years. Nasir Khan was on very friendly terms with 
Asa Ahir, who had been one of the first of the local chieftains 
to submit to the Musalman military authorities, and was 
universally respected for his charitable disposition and piety. 
Shortly before Nasir Khan's assumption of ofiice a great famine 
had raged in Khandesh, and Asa Ahir had saved many lives 
by gratuitously distributing corn from his granaries and by 
employing many labourers in rebuilding the ancestral fort 
which gave protection to his own flocks and herds and the 
farms and homesteads of his retainers from the bands of robbers 
which infested the neighbouring forests. He was a wealthy 
man, possessed of five thousand buffaloes, five thousand cows, 
twenty thousand sheep, and a thousand mares. 

Asa Ahir's fort was strong, his influence in the neighbour- 
hood was great, and he had two thousand well-armed yeomen 
devotedly attached to his service. Nasir Khan coveted his 
neighbour's possessions, but hesitated to attack Asa Ahir 
openly ; though he might have fabricated an excuse for doing 
so, in spite of the obligations owed to him — for Nasir had 
accepted many rich presents from the chieftain when he 



I 



BREAK-UP OF THE DELHI EMPIRE 

succeeded to the charge of the district. So Nasir Khan 
prepared a cunning trap^for the imsuspecting Hindu. He 
wrote a friendly letter to Asa saying that two neighbouring 
rajas had assembled large forces, and that he had suspicions 
of their intentions. The chief fort of the district, that of 
Talnir, was occupied by his own brother, Malik Iftikar. The 
other one was too near to the said rajas' territories to be a 
safe retreat. He therefore begged Asa to take his (Nasir 
Khan's) family under the protection of liis roof, while he 
himself prepared to resist the rajas' impending attack. 

Asa gladly agreed to the proposal ; he gave orders that 
suitable apartments should be prepared for the reception of 
the Governor's family, and that every respect should be paid 
to them. The next day several dhulis came up the hill with 
the first arrivals of the expected guests — some Muhammadan 
ladies, who were installed in the apartments prepared for them 
and visited by Asa's wife and daughter. The day afterwards 
it was announced to the chieftain of Asirgarh that two hundred 
dhulis, bearing the Governor's wife, mother, and the rest of 
the household, were approaching the castle. Asa ordered the 
gates to be thrown open, and accompanied by his sons he rode 
out to escort the party to their residence. But immediately 
after they had joined the procession the occupants of the 
dhulis, who were some of Nasir Khan's armed retainers, sprang 
out and, after cutting down Asa Ahir and his sons, attacked 
and put to flight the chieftain's men-at-arms before they had 
time to recover from the panic which the murderous assault 
had caused. 

Nasir Khan as soon as he heard of the complete success of 
his dastardly plot proceeded to Asirgarh and began to strengthen 
the fortifications ; but acting on the advice of the Shaikh 
Zein-ud-din of Daulatabad, his family's spiritual adviser, who 
came to congratulate him on " his success against the infidels," ^ 
he did not establish a permanent residence there, but chose 
a site for a new town, unstained by foul murder, on the western 
bank of the Tapti. History does not record whether it was 
^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. iv, p. 290. 

357 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

only superstition which prompted the Shaikh to give this 
advice, or whether the holy man was shocked when he heard 
the whole story of the outrage. But even Nasir Khan seems 
to have felt some qualms of conscience, or fear of the vengeance 
of Asa Ahir's spirit, for neither he nor his descendants made 
use of the money and jewels taken from Asirgarh. The 
property, it is said, fell intact into the hands of Akbar two 
centuries afterwards, when he took possession of Khandesh.^ 

Nasir Khan was as ready to use a Hindu raja as a tool 
against a Musalman enemy as he was to compass his destruc- 
tion by foul means. He supported the Raja of Jalwara against 
the Sultan of Gujerat by persuading Ahmad Shah Bahmani, 
his father-in-law, to send an army into the Gujerat territory. 
When this expedition ended disastrously he sought the assist- 
ance of the Sultans of Malwa and Gujerat in stirring up trouble 
in his father-in-law's dominions. Finally this typical war- 
lord of the realistic school was ignominiously defeated by 
'Ala-ud-din, his son-in-law, commanding the army of the 
Dekhan, and died a few days afterwards. His reign lasted 
forty years. 

The rest of the history of the Khandesh dynasty has no 
special interest. The Faruki Khans were generally tributary 
to the Sultans of Gujerat, with whom they were connected by 
marriage. Thej^ took part in the struggle with the Moguls, 
and the Khandesh dynasty survived the conquest of Gujerat 
by Akbar's armies. The last of the Khans, Bahadur Khan, 
was besieged in Asirgarh by Akbar, and held out until a pesti- 
lence among the garrison made further resistance futile. In 
1599 Asa Ahir's fortress with all its treasures came into the 
possession of the Great Mogul, and Nasir Khan's descendant 
was conveyed as a State prisoner to Gwalior. 

^ The Musalman historian omits to mention, however, that it was a tradi- 
tion with Indian kings not to use the treasure handed down to them by their 
predecessors, but to treat it as a reserve for times of great emergency. 



358 



CHAPTER VI 

MARCO POLO 

THK detailed accounts of Muhammadan writers, who 
are the principal authorities for the political history 
of India in the period we are reviewing, are supple- 
mented by the observations of various European travellers 
regarding the internal state of the country and the manners 
and customs of the people. Apart from their information as to 
the economic state of the country, none of them have quite 
the same value as the illuminating memoirs of the Chinese 
pilgrims of the fifth and seventh centuries, though they are 
interesting as wholly detached criticism of foreign onlookers. 

Marco Polo, who visited India in the latter part of the thir- 
teenth century, describes the pearl fishery in, or adjoining, the 
Gulf of Manaar, practised then by the same methods as now. 
He is struck by the popular superstitions of the divers in using 
magic spells to exorcise the shark-demon infesting these waters, 
and notes the great revenue which the king drew from royalties 
on the proceeds of the fishery. 

He then describes the province of Maabar, or the Coromandel 
coast districts, including what then remained of the Chola 
kingdom and the Raja of Telingana's territory. His European 
sense of propriety was shocked by the aversion of the inhabi- 
tants of a tropical country to superfluous clothing — even the 
king went as bare as the rest, though he had a magnificent 
necklace of 104 ^ large pearls and rubies, a priceless heirloom 
upon which he told his daily prayers, while the jewellery he 
wore besides was worth more than a city's ransom ! It is 
clear, therefore, that they had the means of dressing themselves 
more decently. 

^ Probably, as Sir Henry Yule suggests, an error for 108, which is the 
mystic number of a Vaishnava rosary. 

359 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

The king in that part of Southern India had about five 
hundred wives and many children. His person was guarded 
by a number of nobles or " trusty lieges/' who when their 
sovereign died were bound by oath to accompany him to the 
other world by throwing themselves on the funeral pyre — a 
custom which Sir H. Yule observes was not peculiar to India. 
Marco Polo says nothing of the practice of sati by the king's 
wives, but he mentions that many women, when their husbands 
died, burned themselves along with the body, and won great 
praise for doing so. 

The people were almost exclusively vegetarians : only Mu- 
hammadans and outcasts followed the butcher's trade. They 
mostly abstained from alcohol, and were careful to avoid 
contamination from the common use of drinking vessels. With 
regard to their own persons they were extremely cleanly, 
though Marco Polo thought it odd that they rubbed the mud 
floors and walls of their houses all over with cow-dung to keep 
them clean and free from vermin. The custom of sitting on 
the ground instead of on chairs was explained to him as the 
Indian way of doing reverence to Mother Earth. Every 
child's horoscope was taken at birth, and in after-life every 
action was influenced by a firm belief in astrology, " sorcery, 
magic, and geomancy, and suchlike diabolical arts." In this 
respect India did not differ much from Europe of the Middle 
Ages. 

The people of Maabar, says Marco Polo, were born traders. 
Parents when their boys were thirteen years of age sent them 
out to earn their living as traders, giving them a small sum — 
twenty or thirty groats — ^to start with. The juvenile capitalists 
went about all day buying and selling, bringing home the 
food they earned for their mothers to cook, but not eating a 
scrap at their fathers' expense. At the time of the pearl 
fishery they ran to the beach, while the big merchants sheltered 
themselves in their houses from the hot sun, and bought from 
the fishermen a few pearls — five or six, according to their 
means. Then they brought the pearls to the merchants and 
sold them again at a profit — after the usual haggling. So 
360 



MARCO POLO 

they were trained " to be very dexterous and keen traders." ^ 
Evidently the Vaisyas of Southern India had a very practical 
system of commercial education, and as they had a great 
reputation for honesty and truthfulness it cannot be said that 
either East or West has advanced much in that direction since 
that time, 

Marco Polo gives further particulars of the trading com- 
munity of Southern India, and shows that in the thirteenth 
century the country still maintained its ancient reputation 
as one of the chief marts of Asia, He repeats fabulous stories 
of the famous diamond mines of Golconda and the methods 
by which the stones were collected. There were vast accumula- 
tions of wealth in the royal treasuries, for when the king died 
none of his successors touched the wealth he had stored up, 
but handed it on to their children. In the Telugu country 
were made the finest muslins and other costly fabrics : "In 
sooth they look like tissue of spider's web ! There is no king 
nor queen in the world but might be glad to wear them. The 
people have also the largest sheep in the world, and great 
abundance of all the necessaries of life," ^ On the Malabar 
coast there was, as there had been from time immemorial, a 
great trade in pepper, ginger, and other spices, as well as dye- 
stuffs, such as indigo and Brazil wood. Merchants came from 
Southern China, Arabia, and the Levant to obtain cargoes of 
these commodities. 

In Maabar a great part of the king's revenue went in the 
purchase of horses for military purposes, for the climate was 
unsuitable for horse-breeding and they were consequently all 
imported from Arabia and Persia by sea. Incidentally this 
observation throws light upon the great part which the horse 
played in Indian political history. From the time the Aryans 
entered the country the horse of the Kshatriya fighting men 
and the splendidly equipped war-car of their chieftains gave 
the Aryans an incontestable superiority over the Dravidians 
and other races in the long struggle for supremacy. But in 

1 Yule's Travels oj Marco Polo, vol. ii, p. 344. 

2 Ibid,, p. 361. 

361 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

India — especially in the south — ^the Aryan war-horse gradually 
deteriorated, and the elephant did not prove an efficient substi- 
tute for it ; so that when the Central Asian tribes — expert 
bowmen mounted on their sturdy mares — poured down into 
the Indian plains the Indo- Aryan cavalry was outclassed and 
their armies were at the same disadvantage as their ancient 
antagonists had been. The Musalman war-lords monopolised 
the best horse-breeding grounds of Asia. The South Indian 
kings in the thirteenth century knew by experience the reasons 
for the enemy's superiority, and tried to make good their 
military deficiencies by a large importation of horses, but did 
not succeed in redressing the balance by this method. 

Marco Polo had much to say of Indian merchants in Gujerat 
— ^those of the Vaisya caste who wore the sacred thread. He 
praised them as being the best and most truthful in the world. 
A foreign merchant could safely entrust his goods to them for 
sale, and they would " sell them in the most loyal manner, 
seeking zealously the profit of the foreigner and asking no 
commission except what he pleases to bestow." ^ But they 
were as superstitious as the rest of the people and regulated 
all their actions by the observation of signs and omens. No 
business could be done except on the day and hour they found 
propitious for it. They had a short and easy way of collecting 
debts which were overdue. The creditor when he met his 
debtor had only to draw a circle round him unawares, and the 
latter would not dare to pass outside of it without the creditor's 
leave for fear of the penalty of the law.^ Marco Polo witnessed 
an incident in which a raja who owed a foreign merchant a 
certain sum of money was thus compelled to satisfy the claim. 

The Venetian traveller says nothing of the great struggle 
then going on between the Musalman and Hindu powers : 
all the countries he visited were under Hindu rule, and the 
invasion of the Dekhan by 'Ala-ud-din's armies did not begin 
until a few years afterwards. The western seas were infested 

1 Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii, p. 363. 

* Or, as Sir Henry Yule explains, for fear of the wrath of the deity invoked 
by the creditor when he drew the magic circle. 
362 



I 



MARCO POLO 

with pirates, but Marco Polo does not speak of any difficvilties 
in travelling by land. In Southern India there were five 
kings, brothers born of one father and mother, who were only 
restrained from continually fighting with each other by their 
widowed mother's influence. When she died, he said, they 
would most assuredly fall out and destroy one another. But 
one of them, at least, who ruled in the extreme south, admini- 
stered his kingdom well and showed great favour to merchants 
and foreigners. Telingana had been ruled for forty years by 
a queen, " a lady of much discretion," who for the great love 
she bore her husband who reigned before her would not re- 
marry. And during those forty years " she had administered 
her realm as well as ever her husband did, or better ; and as 
she was a lover of justice, of equity and of peace, she was more 
beloved by those of her kingdom than ever I^ady or lyord of 
theirs before." ^ Sir H. Yule identifies the queen to whom 
this fine tribute is paid with Rudramana Devi, the widow of 
Rudra Deva, the Raja of Worangal, who had extended his 
kingdom to the east coast and up to the frontier of Orissa. 

As a good Venetian citizen Marco Polo naturally writes 
with disgust and horror of the Eastern vikings who lived by 
the plunder of peaceful traders. But these Indian pirates 
seem to have set an example of magnanimity and discretion 
to others of the same profession in Europe, for instead of 
murdering men, women, and children, it was their custom to 
release the merchants they plundered, saying, " Go along with 
you and get more gain, and that mayhap will fall to us also ! " 
Their scientific method of forcing their captives to surrender 
valuable pearls or precious stones they swallowed by administer- 
ing a mixture of tamarind and sea-water, if unpleasant, was 
not inhuman. The Raja of Tana provided his army with 
horses by legalising the system of piracy on the understanding 
that all horses captured should be considered as State property. 
Military necessity, as in modern times, was held to justify the 
State's condonation of piracy ; though Marco Polo thought 
the practice " naughty and unworthy of a king." The urgent 
^ Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii, p. 360. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

demand for horses for military purposes is evidenced by Marco 
Polo's statement that no ship ever went to India from the 
West without horses in addition to its other cargo. 

Piracy was, however, kept within bounds by the maritime 
law of India and not allowed to encroach upon the fundamental 
rights of humanity. At the recognised ports of trade merchants 
were safe from the depredations of sea-rovers : only if their 
ships were driven out of their course by wind or weather and 
went ashore, or if they took refuge in an unknown harbour, 
they had to beware, for the seafaring population of the 
coast districts would regard them as lawful spoil — the gods 
they worshipped had sent them these riches, and they were 
the rightful owners." The merchants doubtless covered the 
risk by the prices they charged to their usual customers. The 
ethics of piracy sank to a much lower plane when, in Muham- 
madan times, sectarian and racial animosities were mixed up 
with them. 

Marco Polo's observations on Indian religious practices were 
as superficial as those of the majority of Europeans. He 
ascribed popular superstitions common to all humanity to the 
particular forms of religious ritual adopted by Indians, and 
was unable to understand the symbolism which gave their 
image- worship its real spiritual significance. At the same time 
he was probably right in his judgment that some forms of 
Indian priestcraft were even more pernicious in their effect 
than similar perversions in Europe ; though, like other Western 
onlookers, he was unable to understand the deep religious 
feeling which animated the Indian masses. 

He describes the Brahmans of Gujerat as being devoted to 
their idols, and so strict that they would rather die than do 
what their I^aw pronounced to be a sin. They were very long- 
lived, owing, he said, to the use of a medicine compounded of 
sulphur and mercury. Some yogis went stark naked because, 
as they said, they had come naked into the world and desired 
nothing that was of this world. " Moreover," they declared, 
" we have no sin of the flesh to be conscious of, and therefore 
we are not ashamed of our nakedness, any more than you 
364 



I 



MARCO POLO 

are to siiow your hand or your face. You who are conscious 
of the sins of the flesh do well to have shame and to cover 
your nakedness," - A similar line of argument explains why 
chaste women of the Malabar districts even at the present day 
often wear a minimum of clothing, or go without any, while 
prostitutes are particular in covering their persons. 

There is a reminiscence of the temptation of the Buddha 
by Mara and his daughters in the rule observed by some of 
the monastic orders of Gujerat. Before a novice took the 
vow of the Order the monks sent for the nautch-girls from the 
neighbouring temple to dance before him and try his continence 
with their blandishments. " If he remains indifferent they 
retain him, but if he shows any emotion they expel him from 
their society. For they say they will have no man of loose 
desires among them." ^ Marco Polo also noticed the customs 
which the orthodox Jain community of Gujerat maintains to 
the present day. " They would not kill an animal on any 
account, not even a fly, or a flea, or a louse, or anything in 
fact that has life ; for they say these have all souls, and it 
would be sin to do so." ^ For the same reason they ate no 
vegetables in a green state and spread their food only on dried 
leaves. 

The Portuguese who entered into Indian politics two centuries 
after Marco Polo's visit were, as before stated, the first European 
nation to come into close contact with India since the time of 
Alexander ; but their interests were purely mercenary, and 
their daring but unscrupulous enterprises only assisted the 
disintegration of Aryan India which the Muhammadan invasions 
began. It was not until the middle of the sixteenth century 
that the intellectuals of Portugal under the zealous leadership 
of St Francis Xavier began to follow up the noble-spirited 
work of the pioneers of Aryan civilisation in India, but their 
pious endeavours were ultimately frustrated by the corruption 
and demoralisation of the governing classes in Goa. The 
Vaisyas of the West, who had already begun to play a great 

^ Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii, p. 366. 
8 Ibid., p. 366. 8 Ibid., p. 366. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

part in European politics, eventually gained the supreme 
control of all political relations between Europe and India, 
wliich they maintain to a great extent even in the present 
day. Indo-Aryan polity never showed greater wisdom than 
in making both military and commercial interests subject to 
the control of the highest intellectual forces of the State. 



366 




CHAPTER VII 

THE MOGUL INVASION 

E must now resume the political history of the central 
Muhammadan power in Northern India, which was 
broken off in a previous chapter with the death of 
Sultan Firuz Shah of Delhi at the venerable age of ninety. The 
state of tranquillity and comparative prosperity to which he had 
restored his dominions began to deteriorate when the infirmities 
of old age made him incapable of controlling the government, 
and his relatives began the usual contest for the succession, 
in which the Hindu rajas generally decided the issue between 
the different Musalman factions by the support they gave to 
one party or another. Firuz Shah's successor, a dissolute 
grandson, Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlak II, was murdered after five 
months. Another grandson, Abubekr, shortly afterwards was 
deposed by the legitimate claimant to the throne, Nasir-ud-din, 
a son of Firuz Shah. This Sultan died in 1394 after a reign of 
six and a half years. His son reigned forty-five days, and 
finally Mahmud Tughlak, another son of Nasir-ud-din, and a 
minor, was placed on the throne after violent disputes among 
the nobles, who assumed the control of the government during 
the minority of the Sultan. 

It was in the midst of the disorders which followed these 
dynastic disputes that the governors of the different provinces 
of the Delhi Empire established themselves as independent 
rulers and Muhammadan India became as divided against 
itself as Aryavarta had been at the time of the invasion of 
Mahmud of Ghazni. The Mogul power in Central Asia, on the 
other hand, had been thoroughly organised and consolidated 
since the beginning of the thirteenth century by a succession 
of able war-lords who had been watching closely the course of 

367 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

political events in India, and from time to time trying the 
strength of their armies against the Muhammadan conquerors of 
the country. Throughout the same period the Moguls had been 
gradually acquiring a foothold in India in the service of Muham- 
madan sultans, who were glad to enlist these well-mounted 
bowmen in their armies as converts to the cause of Islam. By 
the end of the fourteenth century the Moguls, both in India 
and in Central Asia, had settled their somewhat dubious 
religious standing by openly professing the Muslim faith, and 
their great war-lord, Timur or Tamerlane, posed as the champion 
of Islam by right of birth, for he claimed descent from the 
Khalif Ali ibn Abu Talib. In reality Timur was a Turk, but for 
political reasons his court genealogists gave him a pedigree 
which made him a pure Mongol and a descendant of Chinghiz 
Khan. 

In 1398 Timur, thirsting for an opportunity to distinguish 
himself as a ghdzi, or slayer of infidels, found the time ripe for 
another invasion of India, conveniently ignoring the fact that 
the greater part of Hindustan was then under Musalman rule. 
He first sought an omen from the Quran, and found it in the 
verse : " O Prophet, make war upon infidels and unbelievers 
and treat them with severity." Then, calling a council of war 
at Samarkand, he put it to his generals and other counsellors 
whether he should invade Hindustan or China, at the same 
time suggesting to them that the Divine decree made it in- 
cumbent upon him to choose the former alternative. 

Some of his generals demurred, pointing out the great strength 
of the ' four defences ' of India. Others declared that as 
Stiltan Mahmud had conquered Hindustan {sic) with 30,000 
horse, the Great Sultan Timur, who had 100,000 valiant Tartars 
waiting at his stirrup, was certain of the favour of Almighty 
God if he gave orders for the expedition. One of the nobles 
pleased TimGr greatly by pointing out that the conqueror of 
India became the Lord Paramount of the earth. Another one 
drew attention to the prospect of rich booty. " The whole 
country of India," he said, " is full of gold and jewels, and in 
it are seventeen mines of gold and silver, diamond and ruby 
368 



THE MOGUL INVASION 

and emerald and tin and iron and steel [sic] and copper and 
quicksilver, etc., and of the plants which grow there are those 
fit for making wearing apparel, and aromatic plants, and the 
sugar-cane, and it is a country which is always green and verdant, 
and the whole aspect of the country is pleasant and delightful. 
Now, since the inhabitants are chiefly polytheists and infidels 
and idolaters and worshippers of the sun, by the order of God 
and His Prophet it is right for us to conquer them." ^ 

Then the probable revenue of India was discussed. The 
financial experts estimated it at six arbs or 600 krors of miskals 
of silver. Some of the nobles protested against any project 
for the permanent conquest of India, for "if we establish 
ourselves permanently therein our race will degenerate and 
our children will become like the natives of those regions, and 
in a few generations their strength and valour will diminish." 
Timur, seeing that these words made a deep impression upon 
the council, declared that his sole object was to lead an ex- 
pedition against the infidels so that they (the Moguls) might 
convert to the true faith the people of that country, destroy 
their temples and idols, and win the reward which God be- 
stowed upon ghdzls and mujdhids. The great war-lord's 
protestation did not seem to satisfy the council entirely, so 
Timur called in the doctors of Islam and appealed to them for 
their opinion. They unhesitatingly declared that it was the 
duty of the Sultan of Islam and all the people of the true faith 
" to exert their utmost endeavour for the suppression of the 
enemies of their faith." This apostolic pronouncement brought 
the waverers round to Timur's views ; all the nobles declared 
for a holy war in Hindustan, and " throwing themselves on 
their knees they repeated the Chapter of Victory." ^ 

The great war council then dissolved. Some doubts have 
been thrown upon the authenticity of Timur's memoirs in 
which this account is given, but whether the words are Timur's 
or not, the main statements have a genuine ring and may be 
accepted as substantially correct. Timur immediately began 
to mobilise his army. The wily Turk, in fact, some time before 

^ Maljuzat-i Tlmuvi, IRlliot, vol. iii, pp. 396-397. ^ Ibid., p. 397. 

2 A 369 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

had instructed his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who was Governor 
of Kabul, to watch the pohtical situation in India and seek 
for a suitable casus belli — never a matter of great difficulty for 
war-lords, ancient or modern ; but as the Sultan of Delhi was 
an orthodox Musalman, as Timur himself professed to be, 
there were conscientious scruples which had to be satisfied. 
The distracted state of Hindustan during the minority of 
Mahmud Tughlak gave Timur's dutiful grandson the exact 
opportunity he wanted. One of Mahmud's guardians, Sarang 
Khan, had established himself at Multan as an independent 
ruler. Pir Muhammad, as Timur's deputy, wrote a letter to 
Sarang Khan to the effect that the Great Sultan, his master, 
whose fame as a world-conqueror had doubtless reached the 
ears of the Governor of Multan, had ordered that " if the rulers 
of Hindustan come before me with tribute I will not interfere 
with their lives, property, or kingdoms ; but if they are negli- 
gent in proffering obedience and submission, I will put forth 
my strength for the conquest of the kingdoms of India." ^ 

Sarang Khan received Pir Muhammad's envoy courteously, 
but sent him back with the answer that if Timur desired to 
take that kingdom with its rich revenue he must do it by 
force of arms. Pir Muhammad immediately proceeded to cross 
the Indus by a bridge of boats, captured the fortress of Utch, 
and then laid siege to Multan, but found it too strong to take 
by assault, so he wrote to his grandfather for instructions. 
Timur, putting his foot in the stirrup at a lucky moment — for 
in these matters the orthodox Musalman was as superstitious 
as the idolater — left Samarkand in the spring of 1398, crossed ,! 
the passes of the Hindu Kush, and marched via Kabul to Dinkot | 
on the Indus, which he reached in the third week of September, j 
In two days his engineers had constructed a bridge of boats, 
and Timur, having crossed over without opposition, proceeded' 
through desert country to the Jhilam river. Here the Moguls 
took some time to capture a strong position on an island 
defended by a detachment of the Delhi armj^ under the com- 
mand of Shahab-ud-din. Having made sure of his com-;' 
* Malfuzat-i Tlmurl, Elliot, vol. iii, pp. 398-399. 



THE MOGUL INVASION 

mtinications with the thoroughness upon which Timlir prided 
himself by a general massacre of the inhabitants of the island, 
the Moguls marched southward along the Chenab river to its 
confluence with the Ravi, near which the town and fortress of 
Tulamba were situated. Here Timur gazed with admiration 
upon the conflict of the rushing waters where the two great 
rivers met, for there was in his character, as in that of his 
descendants, that combination of childlike delight in the 
beauties of nature and unmitigated ferocity which distinguishes 
the primitive savage. Then with the keen eye of a soldier 
he looked at the fortress on the other side and decided 
that a bridge must be built for his army to cross the river. 
The local zamindars and chiefs represented that it was impossible 
to build a bridge over such a strong and turbulent flood, for 
previous Mogul war-lords had failed in the attempt. Neverthe- 
less in six days the engineers of Timur's army had achieved the 
impossible, partly by driving piles into the river-bed and partly 
by collecting a great number of boats and connecting them 
with chains and rope-cables. When Timur and his troops had 
crossed in safety they marched forward and encamped on 
the plain close to the fortress. The chief Muhammadans of 
Tulamba then came out and made their submission, and Timur, 
having " filled their hearts with joy and triumph by presents 
of costly dresses of honour and Arab horses," fixed the ransom 
of the people of the town at two lacs of rupees, exempting the 
Sayyids, the descendants of the Prophet, and the 'Ulamas, 
the synod of Islamic law and doctrine. Owing, however, to 
the scarcity of provisions, the rapacious Mogul soldiery were 
not to be restrained from plundering the town, and in the 
tumult which ensued the inhabitants were slaughtered without 
mercy. Timur easily found an excuse for ravaging the sur- 
rounding country and for butchering some thousands more. 
He then satisfied his faithful followers' greed by distributing 
the spoils among them. 

In the meantime his grandson, Pir Muhammad, had suc- 
ceeded in taking Multan ; but in the rainy season which 
followed most of his horses died and he was in his turn besieged 

371 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

by the neighbouring zamindars and chieftains. But on the 
approach of Timur's army the siege was raised and Pir Muham- 
mad hastened to join his grandfather. Timur, who without 
wasting time in reducing the fort of Tulamba had attacked and 
dispersed a small force of tribesmen who opposed him, and 
captured large stores of grain in the flourishing villages of the 
district, was now encamped on the banks of the Bias river. 
He manifested his warm approval of his grandson's conduct, 
and furnished him with 30,000 horses to make up for the losses 
his army had suffered. Timur then pushed on towards Multan 
and encamped in the vicinity of the city for four days, while 
Pir Muhammad entertained him at a sumptuous banquet and 
presented him with magnificent gifts, including tiaras, price- 
less jewels, splendidly embroidered cloths, Arab horses, with 
housings set with gold and precious stones, and gold and silver 
vessels in such quantities that the scribes of the Sultan's 
retinue took two days to make an inventory of them. All 
these treasures Timur distributed among the amirs and others 
of his retinue. 

Proceeding rapidly towards Delhi, Timur was detained for 
some time by the siege of Bhatnir, a Rajput stronghold in the 
defence of which Muhammadans and Hindus fought side by 
side and perished together in the jauhdr which terminated 
the struggle. The Moguls were so exasperated by the losses 
they suffered that they slaughtered every one left in the town 
and fortress, and, after piling up a ghastly pyramid of 10,000 
heads, set fire to the houses and razed the fortress to the ground. 
The next town on the line of the Mogul march, called Samana, 
shared the same fate, only the women and children were spared 
to become the slaves of the true believers. On approaching 
the vicinity of Delhi several detachments of the Mogul horse 
which had been sent out to plunder and slaughter the infidels 
rejoined the main body, and Timur found himself seriously 
encumbered by a vast number of prisoners in addition to other 
booty. Besides women and children there were, no doubt, a 
great number of Hindu craftsmen, who were always regarded as 
too useful as slaves of the faithful to be sent to perdition 



THE MOGUL INVASION 

prematurely. The amirs represented to Timtlr that the 
prisoners might become a source of danger in the decisive 
battle now impending, if they were left in the rear with the 
baggage. Moreover, these infidels had shown unmistakable 
signs of joy on the previous day when the enemy had made 
an attack. It was against all the rules of war to set them free, 
and it was too great a military risk to detach a sufficiently 
strong force to guard them. 

Timur agreed that military necessity is above all laws, human 
and divine, and gave orders that every man who had infidel 
prisoners over the age of fifteen should put them to death. 
The order was promptly obeyed, and Timur noted with satis- 
faction that 100,000 impious idolaters were on that day slain. 
And so zealous were the faithful in fulfilling their duty that 
even non-combatants joined in the massacre. " Maulana 
Nasir-ud-din 'Umar, a counsellor and man of learning, who in 
all his life had never killed a sparrow, now in execution of my 
order slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus who were 
his captives." ^ Another Muhammadan historian translated 
by Elliot 2 would lead one to suppose that the women were 
spared, but Timur in his memoirs is made to say that " after 
the whole of the vile idolaters had been sent to hell, I gave 
orders that one out of every ten should be told off to guard 
the property and cattle and horses." 

Up to this time Sultan Mahmud's generals had made no 
serious attempt to oppose the Mogul host. A body of 
5000 cavalry had been sent out from Delhi to reconnoitre ; 
but after an unsuccessful encounter had revealed the great 
streng-th of the enemy it was thought better to await an attack 
under the walls of the fortress. Though the Moguls had a 
great numerical superiority, rumours of the terrific strength 
and size of Indian war-elephants had caused some alarm in 
their ranks, and before the Jumna was crossed the court 
astrologers counselled delay, as the stars were not altogether 
propitious. Timur, however, after reviewing the military 

1 Mal}uzdt-i Ttmiln, Elliot, vol. iii, p. 436, 

2 Ibid., p. 497. 

373 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

situation, was of a different opinion, and knowing as well as 
modern war-lords how to use religious fanaticism in the strategy 
of war he turned to the Quran for a fdl, or omen, in the sacred 
text. A verse in the chapter of the Bee satisfied himself and 
his retinue and discomfited the astrologers, so the Mogul army 
crossed the Jumna and entrenched on the other side, near 
Firuzabad. Always full of resource, Timur had provided his 
infantry with a contrivance of spiked iron, ordering them to 
throw them on the ground in front of the elephants. 

The next day, early in January 1399, the decisive battle 
took place. Mahmud of Delhi and his general Mallu Elhan 
marched out with 10,000 horsemen, 40,000 infantry, and 125 
war-elephants covered with armour, carrying in their howdahs 
crossbowmen and disc-throwers. Grenade-throwers and rocket- 
men marched by the elephants' sides. The vanguard un- 
fortunately fell into a Mogul ambush and was quickly routed, 
while the well-mounted Central Asian bowmen met the charge 
of Mahmud's centre with showers of arrows, which brought 
the elephant-drivers to the ground, and then attacked the 
elephants resolutely, hacking at their trunks with their swords. 
Mahmud's soldiers also fought valiantly, but they were badly led 
and in horsemanship were no match for their agile opponents. 
The maddened elephants turned tail and threw their ranks into 
confusion, and finally the whole army took to flight. Sultan 
Mahmud and Mallu Khan escaped with difficulty and shut 
themselves up in the fortress. Timur received the congratula- 
tions of the imperial princes with tears in his eyes, and casting 
himself upon the ground he poured out thanks to Almighty God 
Who had shown such signal favour to His faithful worshippers 
by this great and glorious victory. 

Soon afterwards the Mogul army entered Delhi in triumph, 
the Sultan having fled to avoid falling into the hands of the 
enemy. Timur's first days in Delhi were spent in court 
ceremonials and festivities. He had all the State elephants, 
120 in number, and several rhinoceroses paraded before him, 
and amused himself vastly by watching the tricks they per- 
formed. To advertise his triumph he ordered that some of 

374 



THE MOGUL INVASION 

them should be sent to the principal towns of his empire, 
Samarkand, Tabriz, Shiraz, Herat, Sharwan, and Azurbaijan. 
Timur's name was proclaimed in all the mosques of the city 
as Sultan of Hindustan, and at a great State function he be- 
stowed honours and lavished presents upon the members of his 
family, the amirs, and other high officers who had distinguished 
themselves in the campaign. While these festivities were 
going on Timur's revenue officials had been busy collecting a 
heavy fine which had been imposed upon the city, and the 
Turkish and Mogul soldiery were amusing themselves in their 
own way at the expense of the infidels. A great crowd of 
Hindus from the suburbs had poured into the city with their 
goods and chattels to escape the marauders outside, and these 
were considered fair game for Timur's soldiery. Timur takes 
some pains to explain the events which followed, but students 
of modern history will find such explanation superfluous. 
When he issued orders that these Hindu refugees should be 
arrested there was some resistance to the military, and " the 
savage Turks [Timur's countrymen] fell to killing and plun- 
dering. The Hindus set fire to their houses with their own 
hands, burned their wives and children in them, and rushed 
into the fight and were killed." ^ For a day and a night 15,000 
Turks were engaged in slaying, plundering, and destroying. 
Then the rest of the Mogul army joined in, and for two days 
more the massacre and plunder continued. Each man took 
from twenty to a hundred infidels as slaves, and the other booty 
was immense. The gold and silver ornaments of the Hindu 
women were taken in such quantities as to exceed all account. 
Only the quarter where the Sayyids, the 'Ulamas, and other 
Musalmans resided was spared. 

When the slaughter was over Timur heard that some Hindus 
had taken refuge in the mosque of Old Delhi and were prepared 
to defend themselves. Such an outrage was not to be excused. 
He immediately gave orders that the house of God should be 
cleared of idolaters and unbelievers. This was at once done, 
and Old Delhi was then given up to rapine and massacre. 
^ Malfu?at-i Ttmun, Elliot, vol. iii, p. 446. 

375 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

It was, Timiir piously observed, the will of God. It had been 
his earnest wish that no evil should befall his new subjects ; 
but God had willed it otherwise and inspired them with a 
spirit of resistance to military orders. Timur's memoirs in 
almost every line might be read as modern European history. 

Besides drawing a striking portrait of himself, Timur also 
throws light upon the methods by which he and his descendants 
have won the credit of being the great architects of India, as 
the creators of the * Mogul style." When the massacre was 
over and the captives had been counted, he ordered that all 
the artisans and skilled mechanics who were masters of their 
respective crafts should be picked out from among the prisoners 
and set aside. Accordingly some thousands of craftsmen were 
selected to await the Sultan's commands. The master-builders 
and masons were retained for the imperial service, for Timur, 
following the example of Mahmud of Ghazni, had resolved to 
build a great mosque in his capital, Samarkand, which should 
be without a rival in the world. The rest of the craftsmen 
were distributed among the imperial princes, the amirs, and 
others holding official positions in different parts of Western 
Asia. So the * Mogul style ' and the ' Pathan style ' were 
both the product of Indo-Aryan culture by adaptation to a 
new environment and new technical conditions. Both are 
directly related to the temples and palaces of Hindu India, 
to the Mahabharata and Ramayana, Sakuntala, and other 
creations of Hindu genius. They are only Mogul and Pathan 
in the same sense as St Sophia of Constantinople is Turkish. 
The Turks plundered the intellectual riches of Asia, but never 
increased them by the fruit of their own intellect. lyike the 
Dravidians they civilised themselves by mixture with Aryan 
blood and by adopting Aryan culture ; but the Turk of sang 
pur has remained a savage to the present day — though like 
many other savages he may have charming qualities, exhibited 
at their best when he is not on the war-path. 

Timur remained in Delhi only fifteen days, and then, having 
appointed an Indian Muhammadan, Khizr Khan, as liis viceroy 
— no doubt because none of his sons or nobles cared to under- 



THE MOGUL INVASION 

take the ungrateful task — ^he took his departure, ostensibly 
to fulfil his duty of waging war against the infidels of Hindu- 
stan. The real reason was that famine and pestilence began 
to appear in the countryside devastated by the Mogul army, 
which made his situation precarious ; while his followers, 
glutted with plunder and bloodshed, were anxious to return 
to their homes before the hot season set in. Pir Muhammad's 
losses at Multan warned Timur against the risks to which his 
precious horses were liable in the Indian plains. Moreover, 
Timur himself was sixty-three years old and suffered from 
rheumatism. So, after gathering more plunder by following 
the Ganges up to Hardwar, and by a raid into Kashmir, he 
returned to Samarkand via I^ahore and Kabul. 

He died in 1405, about five years after his return, and was 
buried in a splendid mausoleum built by his captive craftsmen. 
The long inscription on the ' world-conqueror's ' tomb makes 
not the slightest allusion to his achievements as a war-lord, but 
is most careful to give his full pedigree, tracing his descent 
first from Chinghiz Khan and then from the amir Bodzontschar. 
The latter had no father, according to the Mogul genealogists, 
but was the youngest of three sons miraculously conceived by 
Alongoa, the widow of a Mongohan prince. It follows, there- 
fore, so runs the inscription, that Timur was descended from 
the Khalif Ali ibn Abu Talib. " Alongoa's glorious sons 
have often confirmed this statement concerning him." The 
pedigree is as fictitious as the history of Western writers which 
makes Turks, Afghans, and Moguls the greatest artists and 
architects of India. 



377 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FOUNDING OF THE MOGUL 
EMPIRE 

FOR two months after the Mogul army had left it famine 
and pestilence raged around Delhi, and the stricken 
city had no rulers and hardly any inhabitants. 
Timur's viceroy, Khizr Khan, retired to Multan. Mahmud 
Tughlak had taken refuge in Gujerat and had no inclination 
to reassert his right to the sovereignty of Delhi. The two 
first competitors of the old regime who came forward were 
Nasrat Shah, a grandson of Firuz Shah, and Ekbal Khan, a 
brother of the former Governor of Multan, Sarang, who had 
taken the principal part in the government during Mahmud's 
minority and now acted ostensibly on behalf of his former 
sovereign. Ekbal having proved himself the stronger in the 
field invited Mahmud to return to Delhi. 

The latter was glad to leave his somewhat ignominious 
position as a refugee in Gujerat, but soon found his situation 
in his former capital under Ekbal's protection equally intoler- 
able. So when Ekbal marched against Ibrahim Shah of 
Jaunpur in the hope of recovering that province, Mahmud, 
who accompanied him, went over to the Shark! camp, naively 
expecting that the Shah would receive him with open arms 
and acknowledge him as his lawful sovereign. Ibrahim refused 
to receive him, and Mahmud retired in disgust to Kanauj, 
then a part of the Jaunpur territory. Here he was permitted 
to remain for a time without interference either from Ekbal 
or Ibrahim. But about two years afterwards Ekbal unsuccess- 
fully besieged the place, and then turned his arms against 
Khizr Khan, who hitherto had remained passive at Multan. 
In the battle which ensued Ekbal was killed. Mahmtid was 
378 



FOUNDING OF THE MOGUL EMPIRE 

then invited by the officers in command at Delhi to resume 
his throne. This was in 1405, the year of Timur's death. 
Before Mahmud's death in 1412 he was twice besieged in his 
capital by Khizr Khan, and had disgusted all his partisans 
by his incapacity and pusillanimity. Thus ingloriously ended 
the Turki slave dynasty which had ruled at Delhi for nearly 
a century. 

In 1414, fifteen months after Mahmud's death, Khizr Khan 
had established himself again at Delhi, nominally as the Mogul 
viceroy, for the terror of Timur's invasion had not passed 
away. He claimed to be a Sayyid, or descendant of the 
Prophet, and was much respected on that account and as a 
just and benevolent ruler. But the Sayyid dynasty which he 
founded played an inconspicuous part in the pohtics of Northern 
India during the thirty-six years it lasted. The Delhi Sultanate 
had lost its prestige and had been shorn of its fairest provinces. 
At times it was reduced to the districts in the immediate 
neighbourhood of the city, and besides resisting further incur- 
sions of Moguls it had to maintain itself both against Hindu 
enemies and against the attacks of the numerous independent 
Musalman kingdoms of Hindustan — Gujerat, Malwa, Jaunpur, 
Gaur, and others. By the middle of the fifteenth century the 
Panjab had come into the possession of the Afghans under a 
powerful chieftain, Behlol Lodi, in whose favour Sa3ryid Muham- 
mad abdicated in 1450. Delhi in this way recovered the 
Panjab, and Behlol Lodi increased his dominions, with the 
help of some 20,000 Mogul mercenaries, by the conquest of 
Jaunpur, after a war lasting twenty-six years, which ended in 
Husain Shah, the last of the Sharki line, being forced to take 
refuge at Gaur. 

Sikandar, the second of the lyodi line (1488-1517), did some- 
thing to restore the prestige of the Delhi Sultanate by capable 
administration and successful warfare. He was distinguished 
as a zealous Musalman and a just ruler, except in religious 
matters, for he supported the bigoted Afghan Sunnis in reviv- 
ing the bitter feuds between Musalman and Hindu. We have 
already noticed the general tendency among Indian Muham- 

379 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

madans of the fifteenth century towards a better understanding 
with their Hindu neighbours in religious questions — a move- 
ment strongly supported by Husain Shah and other Musalman 
rulers, and encouraged by Hindu teachers such as Kabir, 
Chaitan5^a, and Ramanand. Sikandar I^odi set his face against 
any compromise with the infidel, A Brahman named Budhan, 
probably a follower of Kabir, who had aroused much discussion 
by maintaining that " the religions both of the Muslims and 
Hindus, if acted on with sincerity, were equally acceptable to 
God," was summoned to appear at the Sultan's court and 
defend his thesis before an inquisition of the 'Ulamas. After 
hearing the infidel's arguments the learned men all agreed that 
unless he renounced his errors and embraced the Muhammadan 
faith he should be put to death. The Sultan confirmed the 
decision, and Budhan was accordingly executed as he refused 
to accept life on such terms. Before dissolving the court the 
Sultan showed his satisfaction with the result by bestowing 
suitable presents upon the judges.^ Budhan seems, however, 
to have found some influential official supporters ; among them 
Ahmad Khan, son of the Afghan Governor of lyucknow, and 
one of the I^odi clan. He was dismissed from office and 
imprisoned. The Jesuit priests of Goa soon afterwards followed 
Sikandar I^odi's example by setting up an Inquisition, with 
all its accompanying horrors, among the native Christian com- 
munity, the effect being a general stampede of Indians from 
the Portuguese colony, and a decided set-back to the cause of 
Christianity. 

Sikandar I^odi not only made a point of destroying Hindu 
temples, but in the city of Mathura he had mosques and 
Muhammadan bazars built opposite to the bathing ghats, and 
ordered that no Hindus should be allowed to bathe there. 
This arbitrary proceeding evoked a protest from a pious 
Musalman, who addressed the Sultan in the public audience 
hall and declared that it was unlawful for a king to interfere 
with the religion of his subjects and prevent them from bathing 
at the places to which they had been accustomed to resort for 

* Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. 577. 
380 



FOUNDING OF THE MOGUL EMPIRE 

ages. " Wretch," cried the Sultan, drawing his sword, " do 
you maintain the truth of the Hindu rehgion ? " " By no 
means," rephed the brave man ; "I speak according to the law. 
Kings should not persecute their subjects on any account." 
This answer, says Ferishta, pacified the Sultan, leaving his 
readers to infer that the rebuke was not unavailing. 

Apart from his narrow religious views Sikandar lyodi seems 
to have been an estimable monarch with a high sense of justice. 
He gave encouragement to learning, especially among the 
officers of his army, so that most of them were well-educated 
men, and " the profession of arms assumed a new character." ^ 
His Hindu subjects also, says his biographer, began to learn 
Persian and to study Muhammadan literature. He died in 
1517, after a reign of twenty-eight years, and was buried at 
Sikandra, the place named after him, near Agra, afterwards 
the resting-place of Akbar. 

The reign of Ibrahim lyOdi, his son and successor, is only 
distinguished for the opportunity it gave to the Moguls under 
Babur to effect the permanent conquest of Hindustan. He 
gave mortal offence to all the chiefs of the I^odi clan by with- 
drawing the privilege granted them in the two previous reigns 
of sitting in the presence of the Sultan, instead of standing 
with their hands crossed before them. In consequence they 
conspired to place his brother, Jalal Khan, on the throne of 
Jaunpur, leaving Ibrahim only Delhi and a few of the surround- 
ing districts. The plot failed, and Jalal Khan was eventually 
seized and put to death ; but the disaffection of the I^odi 
chieftains was kept alive by Ibrahim's treacherous and arbi- 
trary conduct, and finally Daulat Khan lyodi, the Governor of 
Lahore, rebelled and sent an invitation to Babur, who had by 
that time won the kingdom of Kabul, to reassert his right to 
the sovereignty of Delhi derived from his grandfather, Timur. 

Babur, who had already made several attempts to invade 

India, was nothing loth, but knowing the Afghan character 

and having good reason to suspect a trick, he first determined 

to make his communications secure by a conquest of the 

^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. i, p. 587. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Panjab. In this enterprise he succeeded completely, though 
Daulat Khan's shiftiness more than justified Babur's cautious 
attitude. Babur then sent 'Ala-ud-din, Ibrahim's uncle, who 
had escaped from prison and taken refuge in the Mogul camp, 
with an army to attack Delhi, while he himself remained in 
Kabul to keep his unruly Afghan subjects in order. 'Ala-ud- 
din was completely defeated under the walls of Delhi and 
retreated to the Panjab. Then Babur determined to take the 
business in hand himself. In December 1525 he crossed the 
Indus with a strong force of artillery, but only 10,000 picked 
horsemen. 

Daulat Khan, who now sided with the Sultan of Delhi, had 
collected an army of 40,000 men to oppose the Moguls, but 
on Babur's approach he shut himself up in the fortress of 
Milwat and surrendered after a few days' siege. Babur, whose 
genius showed itself as much in his shrewd diplomacy as in 
his brilliant success in war, overlooked the chieftain's double- 
dealing and conciliated the Afghans by restraining the maraud- 
ing propensities of his Mogul troops, thus saving Daulat Khan's 
household from molestation, and a fine library collected by 
his son from destruction. As Babur marched towards Delhi 
the dissensions among Ibrahim lyodi's Afghan followers con- 
tinued, one of the chieftains coming out to join the Mogul 
army with 3000 horse, but when the two armies faced each 
other on the historic field of Panipat, in April 1526, Ibrahim 
could still muster nearly ten times Babur's little army of about 
12,000 horse. Babur, however, had the superiority in artillery, 
and by long experience in war he had made his military machine 
the most perfect in Asia, Ibrahim was young and inexpe- 
rienced, and had made the fatal mistake of despising his enemy. 
" He was," says Babur, " negligent in all his movements ; he 
marched without order, retired or halted without plan, and 
engaged in battle without foresight," 

Babur, on the other hand, neglected no precautions which 
his military experience and skill suggested. For six days 
before the battle he was engaged in organising his artillery 
and strengthening his position by linking the guns together 
382 



FOUNDING OF THE MOGUL EMPIRE 

with leather ropes made of raw hides, " according to the 
practice of the Turkish armies in Asia Minor," He entrenched 
himself so strongly that one of his officers suggested that the 
enemy would never dream of attacking him there. " You 
judge of him," rephed Babur, " by the khans and sultans of 
the Uzbeks. . . . But you must not judge of our present 
enemies by those who were then opposed to us. They have 
not the ability to discriminate when it is proper to advance 
and when to retreat." Babur's intuition was correct. Ibra- 
him's great host came on impetuously in a solid phalanx with 
the intention of carrying the Mogul position by sheer weight 
of numbers. Babur marshalled his horsemen in two lines, 
composed of four divisions with a few light troops thrown out 
in advance and with strong reserves in the rear of each, and 
having carefully instructed his generals took up his position 
in the centre of the first line. 

Ibrahim began the battle by a great charge of cavalry, which 
was met by Babur's artillery and archers so steadily that it 
failed to break the first Mogul line. When the Afghans began 
to retreat they found themselves surrounded, for Babur at 
the critical moment had ordered his reserves to wheel round 
the enemy's flanks and fall upon them in the rear — a manoeuvre 
which succeeded perfectly. In the hand-to-hand melee which 
ensued Ibrahim and 5000 of his body-guard were slain, and 
the rest of the Delhi army completely routed with a loss 
estimated at 12,000 to 50,000 men. Babur immediately 
followed up his decisive victory by sending a strong cavalry 
force under the command of his son Humayun to occupy 
Agra, while he himself pushed on to Delhi, which he entered 
on April 22, 1526, two days after the battle. The Khutba, 
or prayer for the sovereign ruler, was at once read in Babur's 
: name at the Great Mosque ; but after inspecting the city and 
! visiting the tombs of Muhammadan saints and heroes he 
joined Humayun before Agra, which was defended by the 
Rajput troops of the Raja of Gwalior, who had shared the 
fate of Ibrahim on the field of Panipat. The Rajputs, however, 
in a few days made terms with Babur, and in gratitude for 

383 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the protection afforded to them the Raja's family presented 
to Humayun, as a peshkesh, or token of homage, a quantity of 
the State jewels, including a great diamond weighing eight 
miskals, or about 280 carats, which had formerly been in the 
possession of the Sultan 'Ala-ud-din of Malwa. This stone is 
generally believed to have been the celebrated Koh-i-Nur. 

Thus Babur, as he writes with pride in his memoirs, with 
an army hardly a tithe of the forces which Mahmud of Ghazni 
and Muhammad Ghuri had commanded, obtained a permanent 
foothold in the heart of Hindustan and laid the foundation 
of the Mogul Empire in India. His success, however, was 
as much due to the weakness and hesitation of his opponents, 
caused by pohtical dissensions in the camp of the Afghan 
ruler, as to his military genius. The events which followed 
the great victory of Panipat will be dealt with in a subsequent 
chapter. 



384 



II 



CHAPTER IX 
THE TURKISH DYNASTY OF BIJAPUR 

WHIIvB two great Musalman dynasties were thus strug- 
gling for power in Northern India, another one in 
the southern part of the Dekhan, which had kept 
itself almost entirely aloof from the politics of Hindustan, 
continued the holy war against the infidels, who since the days 
of 'Ala-ud-din had set up a strong barrier against the further 
progress of the arms of Islam southward. About thirty-five 
years before Babur crossed the Indus a Turkish dynasty was 
established at Bijaptir by Yusuf 'Adil Khan, an officer in the 
service of the Bahmani Sultan MahmUd Shah II, The latter 
was a weak and dissolute creature in the hands of Georgians, 
Circassians, Kalmuks, Turks, and Moguls, who formed his 
body-guard. The quarrels of these truculent swashbucklers 
and the weakness of their master soon ended the Bahmani 
dynasty, and its territories were split up into a number of 
minor Musalman principalities, of which the Bijapiir state was 
one. The latter, under the 'Adil Shahi dynasty, quickly aggran- 
dised itself, partly at the expense of its Muhammadan rivals, 
but chiefly by its final victory over the Vijayanagar dynasty, 
which at the beginning of Yusuf 'Adil Shah's reign had main- 
'tained for two centuries Hindu power in Southern India. 

The war with Vijayanagar was a continuation of a struggle, 
ilmost unexampled in its ferocity, which the Bahmani Sultans 
lad commenced. About the year 1371, Muhammad Shah 
Bahmani I in a drunken revel at court had presented a band 
)f musicians with a draft upon the treasury of Vijayanagar, 
.ealed with his own seal, which he ordered to be despatched 
orthwith to the Raja for payment. The latter on receipt of 
he insulting document had the messenger seated on an ass 

2B 385 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and sent back to Kulbarga, after having been subjected to the 
derision and contumely of the populace of Vijayanagar. He 
then marched his army into the Bahmani Sultan's territory, 
captured the fortress of Mudkal, and put the whole garrison 
to the sword, except one man who escaped to bring the news 
to Muhammad. The latter in a fit of fury ordered him to be 
executed for having dared to survive the death of his comrades. 
He then set out with 9000 chosen horse to wreak vengeance 
on the Raja, having taken a solemn oath not to sheathe the 
sword until the blood of the ' martyrs ' had been avenged b^^ 
the slaughter of 100,000 infidels. So rapid was his march 
that the Vijayanagar army was taken by surprise and broke 
up, leaving the camp with its thousands of followers in the 
hands of the enemy. Muhammad's vow was partly fulfilled 
by the indiscriminate massacre of 70,000 men, women, and 
children. Soon afterwards the Sultan, having received reinforce- 
ments from Daulatabad, crossed the Tungabhadra river and 
invaded Vijayanagar territory. A desperate battle took place 
with great losses on both sides, but the day was won by the 
Musalmans when the Vijayanagar elephants turned on their 
own lines and the Hindu commander-in-chief fell mortally 
wounded. The Raja, Krishna Rai, was compelled to seek 
safety in flight, and the massacre of the unbelievers was 
renewed with relentless savagery under the Sultan's eyes. 

The end of the campaign was that the Raja was compelled by 
his own subjects to sue for peace in order to put an end to the 
horrid bloodshed. Muhammad Shah, though the death toll 
required for the fulfilment of his vow had been far exceeded, 
refused to listen to any overtures until the bill for the musicians 
drawn up in his drunken carouse had been paid. Krishna's 
ambassadors immediately paid the money, and Muhammad 
Shah gave thanks to God that his orders had been obe^-ed ! 
Seeing that the Sultan was in a good humour the ambassadors 
then ventured to make an appeal in the name of humanit5^ 
No religion, they said, required that the innocent should sufifer 
for the crimes of the guilty, more especially helpless women 
and children. If their master, the Raja, had been in fault, 
386 



TURKISH DYNASTY OF BIJAPUR 

his helpless subjects were not accessory to his errors. The 
Sultan replied with the stock phrase of such murderous war- 
lords—that he had no power to alter God's decrees. The 
ambassadors represented that as God had bestowed upon the 
Sultan the government of the Dekhan it was probable that 
his successors and the Rajas of Vijayanagar would long remain 
neighbours, and that it was reasonable to avoid unnecessary 
cruelty in war. They therefore proposed that a treaty should 
be made between the two powers binding them not to slaughter 
helpless and unarmed inhabitants in future battles. 

" Muhammad Shah," says Ferishta, " struck with the good 
sense of this proposal, took an oath that he would not here- 
after put to death a single enemy after a victory, and would 
bind his successors to observe the same hne of conduct." 
'' From that time to this," he adds, " it has been the general 
custom in the Dekhan to spare the lives of prisoners in war, 
and not to shed the blood of an enemy's unarmed subjects." ^ 
Incidentally Ferishta mentions that this was the first campaign 
in the Dekhan in which artillery was used both by the Hindu 
and the Musalman armies. The Sukrd-nitisdra, however, which 
is certainly older than the fourteenth century, refers to the 
use of cannon and gunpowder. 

Muhammad Shah's son, Mujahid Shah Bahmani, renewed 
the war with Krishna Rai on account of boundary disputes, 
and Vijayanagar seems to have paid tribute to Kulbarga for 
some time afterwards, until Deva Raja in 1398 felt himself 
strong enough to attack Firuz Shah Bahmani. The war con- 
tinued for many years. Sometimes Vijayanagar was invaded 
by the Muhammadan troops and Deva Raja was glad to 
make peace by gratifying Firuz Shah's cosmopolitan taste in 
matrimony. In his harem, it is said, there were Arabians, 
Circassians, Georgians, Turks, Russians, and other Europeans, 
Chinese, Afghans, and Indians from Bengal, Gujerat, Telingana, 
and Maharashtra, and each lady fancied herself the most 
beloved.^ At other times the Hindus overran the Dekhan 

1 Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. ii, p. 319. 
* Ibid., p. 369. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and nearly succeeded in breaking the Mtihammadan power 
there. 

Similar conditions prevailed throughout the greater part of 
the fifteenth century, until the Bahmani kingdom fell to pieces 
through the bestiality and licentiousness of its rulers, though 
the Muhammadan soldiery, probably on account of their better 
equipment, generally maintained a superiority over the Hindus 
in fighting capacity. The Vijayanagar Rajas recognised the 
fact by enlisting a number of Musalman cavalry and archers 
in their armies, and by endeavouring to bind them to loyal 
service by a scrupulous respect for their religious feelings and 
by rewarding them, according to Hindu custom, with grants 
of land. They lived in a separate quarter of Vijayanagar. 
The Raja's master-builders built them a splendid mosque in 
which they could practise their own religious rites undisturbed, 
and the Quran was brought into the royal court when the 
Muhammadan officers came to swear fealty to the Raja. The 
Bijapur Sultans, equally impartial in the choice of military 
weapons, enlisted large numbers of Hindu cavalry from the 
Maharashtra country into their armies. In this respect the 
contest between Bijapur and Vijayanagar was a revival of the 
ancient feud between the Chola and Rashtraktita dynasties. 

The conventional reading of the history of the Dekhan in 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has always made political 
events circle round a contest of religious dogmas. Though the 
differences between Hindu and Musalman and between Sunni 
and Shiah acted as a fulcrum in the dynastic wars of the 
Dekhan and Southern India, and to a considerable extent 
determined the brutal character of the warfare, they had 
hardly more influence as the originating cause of war than 
sectarian disputes had in the wars between Pandava and 
Chola, or Chola and Rashtrakuta. Dynastic ambitions and 
racial animosities, then as now, were infinitely more active 
forces both in creating the war-machines of the rival powers 
and in setting them in motion. The Bijapur dynasty was a 
foreign one, boasting of its connection with the Ottoman 
Sultans of Constantinople. It was equally jealous of the 
388 



TURKISH DYNASTY OF BIJAPUR 

Bahmani Sultans of Arab descent at Kulbarga and Bidar, of 
the Sliahs of Ahmadnagar, who were of Brahman ancestry, 
and of the Hindu Rajas of Vijayanagar. When the Bijapur 
Sultans tried to crush their Musalman rivals at Ahmadnagar 
they invited the aid of the infidel Raja of Vijayanagar. When 
the latter's war-machine became too powerful the Sunni and 
Shiah war-lords joined in smashing it. The quarrels between 
Sunni and Shiah were of a domestic character : they served to 
distinguish the chief factions at court, but had little influence 
on foreign politics. 

Yusuf 'Adil Shah (1490— 15 lo), the first Sultan of Bijapur, 
was too much occupied with the intrigues at the court of 
Kulbarga, by which he had established his independence, to 
enter seriously into the contest with Vijayanagar, though he 
successfully opposed an incursion which Turima, the minister 
who acted as regent during the minority of the Raja, made 
into his territory. He married the sister of a Mahratta chief- 
tain, and was zealous in promoting the tenets of the Shiah 
sect, thus giving a double offence to his Turkish and Abys- 
sinian officers, who were Sunnis and jealous of the favour shown 
to Indian Musalmans. But though he openly proclaimed his 
attachment to Shiah doctrines by altering the service at the 
royal mosque, he forbade the customary abuse of the Sunni 
faith to which Shiahs were addicted, and encouraged Christians 
and Miihammadans of both sects to live at peace with each 
other. " Holy teachers and pious recluses," says Ferishta, 
" were equally astonished at this well-regulated moderation, 
and attributed it to an almost miraculous ability in the wise 
king." 1 It was in his reign that the Portuguese established 
themselves at Goa. 

Of Yusuf 'Adil Shah's character and accomplishments his 
biographer writes : " He also was eminent for his learning, his 
hberality, and his valour. He wrote elegantly and was a 
good judge of poetical composition, and even sometimes wrote 
verses himself. His taste and skill in music were superior to 
those of most of the masters of his time, whom he encouraged 

^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. ui, p. 29. 

389 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

by munificent rewards to attend his court : he himself per- 
formed to admiration on two or three instruments, and in 
his gay moments would sing improvisatore compositions." ^ 
Ferishta's history of the Bijapur dynasty is particularly valu- 
able, as he lived at the Bijapur court in the reign of Ibrahim 
'Adil Shah II (1579-1626), and writes with a sincerity not 
often found in court historians. 

Ismail 'Adil Shah I, born of a Mahratta mother, succeeded 
to the Sultanate of Bijapur in 15 10, but as he was a minor 
the administration was placed in the hands of Kumal Khan, 
a nobleman of the Bahmani court who had espoused the cause 
of his father and had become Yusuf 's Prime Minister. Kumal 
Khan first made himself popular with the foreign faction at 
court by restoring the Sunni service in the royal mosque, and 
then, having enlisted a large number of Mahratta horsemen, 
began to intrigue with the officers to secure the throne for 
himself. Ismail's mother, Babaji Khanam, knowing his 
treasonable designs, for she and the young Sultan were virtually 
prisoners in their own palace, took into her confidence the 
Sultan's foster-father, Yusuf Turk, who had been grievously 
insulted b^^ the regent and readily agreed to risk his life in 
getting rid of him. Kumal Khan had posted his own guards 
in the city and taken up his abode in the fort, close to the royal 
palace, waiting for the day which the conspirators believed 
to be propitious for carrying out the plot. In the meantime 
he feigned sickness and remained in his room. 

Babaji Khanam also pretended. Assuming deep anxiety 
for the regent's health, she called an old female attendant 
whom she knew to be Kumal Khan's spy, and giving her money 
for a ' wave-offering ' for the regent's recovery sent her to make 
inquiries. Then, as if an afterthought had struck her, she 
called the old lady back and begged her to take Yusuf Turk 
with her and prevail upon the regent, as a personal favour 
to the Sultan, to grant her old retainer leave to go on a pilgrim- 
age to Mekka, Kumal Khan received the message in good faith 
and admitted Yusuf Turk to his presence, but while he stretched 

^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. iii, p. 30. 



TURKISH DYNASTY OF BIJAPUR 

out his hand to give the latter the customary pan he was 
stabbed to the heart by a dagger which Ytisuf had concealed 
under his coat. The assassin was immediately cut down 
by the regent's guards, who also killed Babaji Khanam's 
messenger, thinking she was an accomplice in the murder. 

Now the mother of Kumal Khan, not less resourceful than 
the Sultana, came forward to play her part in the tragedy. 
She prevented the regent's attendants from raising a clamour, 
and to make believe that the regent was still alive had the 
corpse propped up with cushions on a masnad in the balcony 
of the palace overlooking the courtyard. Then she sent her 
grandson, Safdar Khan, with the regent's body-guard to 
surround the royal apartments, to seize Ismail and his mother, 
and to proclaim Kumal Khan as Sultan. Babaji Khanam, 
supposing that Yusuf Turk had failed in his attempt, was at 
first inclined to despair, but on the advice of Yusuf 's sister, 
Dilshad Agha, she determined on a desperate resistance. The 
palace gates were shut, and the Turkish guards in the outer 
courtyard of the seraglio obeyed the summons to rally round 
their royal master. The young Sultan came out, accompanied 
by the two ladies, with bows and arrows in their hands and 
clad as men-at-arms, to take part in the defence. 

When Safdar Khan with his rebel guards hammered at the 
palace gates he was met with a shower of arrows from the 
walls. Dilshad Agha, who had previously despatched a mes- 
senger to rouse all the Sultan's partisans in the city, was the 
leading spirit of the defence. With a veil over her face she 
fought as valiantly as her fellow-countrymen, encouraging 
them with animating speeches and promises of reward. But 
the little garrison was greatly outnumbered and many fell 
under the musket-balls of the rebels. At last reinforcements 
began to arrive from the city and were helped over the walls by 
Dilshad Agha at a spot left unguarded by the besiegers. Safdar 
Klhan perceiving this secured all the approaches to the palace, 
brought cannon to batter down the walls, and made a desperate 
assault with five hundred men. But as he was on the point 
of breaking into the courtyard he was pierced in the eye by 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

an arrow, and Ismail broke his back with a heavy stone as he 
lay concealed under the terrace wall. The rebels seeing their 
leader killed rushed to the house of Kumal Khan, but finding 
to their dismay that he also was dead they opened the gates 
of the citadel and fled precipitately. 

Ismail's first care when all danger was over was to bury 
with full honours the body of Yusuf Turk. A fine mausoleum 
with a mosque attached was built over his remains, and so 
long as he lived the Sultan showed his gratitude by going once 
a month to pray over his foster-father's tomb. He rewarded 
Yusuf's relative, Klhusru Turk, with the title of Asad Khan, 
and conferred upon him the district of Belgaum as a jdgir. 
Asad Khan afterwards became commander-in-chief and Ismail's 
most trusted counsellor. The Sultan's confidence was well 
placed, for Asad Khan's loyalty and military skill brought his 
rash and impetuous master out of many dangerous situations. 
Perhaps in consideration of the gallantry of his own women- 
folk Ismail was equally generous to the late regent's mother. 
He allowed her and her family to leave his dominions in safety, 
and gave her a large sum of money for her maintenance. 

For a long time after Ismail remained suspicious of Kumal 
Khan's Mahratta allies and only enlisted Turks and Moguls in 
his body-guard. Though he was himself an adherent of Shiah 
doctrines he was guided in this matter by political rather 
than religious motives. He recognised that the Simni faction 
was a danger to his dynasty. He would not allow any Abys- 
sinian or Indian-born soldiers in his army, but eventually 
relaxed the rule in favour of the children of foreigners bom 
in India, Rajputs and Afghans. The constitution of the 
Bijapur army, says Ferishta, remained on this basis until the 
time of Ibrahim 'Adil Shah II. 

While Ismail was thus struggling for his throne, Turima, the 
minister who had now subverted the ancient dynasty of Vija- 
yanagar, took advantage of the situation at Bijapur to invade 
Ismail's territory and lay siege to Mudkal and Raichor. Ismail 
was unable, for the time being, to prevent these fortresses 
from being taken, for he was too much occupied in watching 
392 



TURKISH DYNASTY OF BIJAPUR 

the proceedings of his Musalman rivals in the Dekhan, espe- 
cially the Amir Berid, who was now practically master of 
Kulbarga and had had a secret understanding with Kumal Khan 
in the latter's attempt to overthrow the Bijapur dynasty. 
During the time Babur was engaged in the conquest of Hindu- 
stan Bijapur was thus the centre of the struggle for mastery 
in the Dekhan, the chief combatants being Ismail 'Adil Shah 
and his loyal minister, Asad Khan ; Amir Berid, who shared 
with the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda the dismembered 
territories of the Bahmani Sultans ; and Turima and his son, 
who ruled at Vijayanagar, A fourth, who played an oppor- 
tunist game, was Burhan Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar : at 
different times he joined Amir Berid in attacking the Bijapur 
Sultan ; allied himself with the latter and married his sister 
Miriam ; fought with his brother-in-law on some domestic 
quarrel, and later on obtained assistance from him in repelling 
an invasion of the Gujeratis. It is noticeable that the brutality 
and viciousness which characterised the struggles of the two 
preceding centuries were generally conspicuous by their absence. 
Religious animosities seemed to have greatly diminished. We 
find a Brahman minister serving at the Musalman court of 
Ahmadnagar, and even acting as the confidential adviser of 
the Amir Berid, a professed champion of the Sunni sect.^ 

A touch of humour lights up the gloomy history of Musalman 
warfare in the description of Asad Khan's penetrating into Amir 
Berid's tent in the dead of night and carrjdng off the crafty 
old fox fast asleep in his camp cot, after a drunken revel ; 
then sarcastically reproaching the " reverend old man," when 
he awoke with horrid dreams of djinns and black magic, for 
his intemperance and consohng him with promises of kind 
treatment. Nor did Ismail find it necessary to exact ven- 
geance for Amir Berid's ingratitude and double-dealing after 
his release. 

By the end of Ismail's reign Bijapur had become the chief 
power in the Dekhan. Mtidkal and Raichor had been recovered 
from the Hindus, though the armies of Vijayanagar still barred 
^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. iii, pp. 57, 220. 

393 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the way further south. Ismail had the reputation of being most 
humane in the administration of justice, averse from listening 
to slander, and fond of the company of learned men and poets. 
" He was adept in the arts of painting, varnishing, making 
arrows, and embroidering saddle-cloths. In music and poetry 
he excelled most of his age." ^ I/ike Firtlz Shah of Delhi he 
probably inherited many of his fine personal qualities from his 
Indian mother, but he was well served by his foreign relatives 
and partisans. 

Ismail's eldest son, Mallu 'Adil Shah, a thoroughly vicious 
youth, reigned only six months, and was then deposed at the 
instigation of his strong-minded grandmother, Babaji Khanam, 
in favour of Ismail's youngest son, Ibrahim. Asad Khan 
remained in power, but serious differences soon arose between 
the young Sultan and his father's trusted minister. Ibrahim 
began by making many sweeping changes in the court and 
in the administration of his kingdom. His first act was to 
dismiss most of the Turkish and Mogul officers and men from 
the royal body-guard and replace them by Abyssinians and 
Dekhani soldiers, both Hindu and Musalman. Many of the 
Musalman foreigners thus discharged enlisted in the body- 
guard of Ramraj, the Raja of Vijayanagar. Ibrahim would 
have none of the Persian fashions which Ismail had introduced 
at court. He restored the Sunni form of service in the royal 
mosque and ordered that the revenue accounts should be kept 
in Mahratti instead of Persian. In consequence of the latter 
change the Brahman accountants began to acquire considerable 
influence in the government of Bijapur — another indication 
that Islam in India was adapting itself to its environment, for 
the orthodox Sunnis had hitherto been known as the most 
violent opponents of the Brahmans. Even the veteran Asad 
Khan was ordered to dismiss his foreign retainers and to follow 
the Sunni ceremonies. He obeyed the first order, but refused 
to comply with the second, and Ibrahim was wise enough not 
to insist upon this demand. 

The relations between Bijapur and Vijayanagar had so much 

^ Ferishta, Briggs' translation, vol. iii, p. 72. 

394 




Tomb of Ibrahim 'Adii, Shah II at Bijapur 




Tomb of Muhammad 'Adil Shah at Bijapur 



394 



TURKISH DYNASTY OF BIJAPUR 

improved that a year after his accession Ibrahim was invited 
to intervene in the internal affairs of the Hindu state, thrown 
into disorder by disputes regarding the succession to the 
throne. The rival claimants were Ramraj, the son of Turima, 
and Bhoj Tirumal Rai, a representative of the former dynasty. 
The latter appealed to Ibrahim for assistance, in return for 
which he promised to acknowledge himself tributary to Bijapur 
and to pay a handsome sum for the expenses of the expedi- 
tionary force. Ibrahim, on the advice of Asad Khan, accepted 
the offer, and on arriving at Vijayanagar with his army was 
lavishly entertained by Tirumal Rai. This betrayal of the 
interests of the State naturally strengthened the cause of 
Ramraj and made all the most powerful Hindu rajas rally 
round his standard. Tirumal Rai committed suicide, and 
Ibrahim, shortly after his return from Vijayanagar, found 
himself involved in a war with Ramraj. This, however, was 
not of long duration, and after an indecisive battle the two 
belligerents came to terms. 

The drastic changes which Ibrahim had made at his court 
encouraged the intriguers to stir up ill-blood between the 
Sultan and his faithful minister, with so much success that 
Asad Khan fearing for his life thought it prudent to retire to 
his Belgaum estates. The strained relations between the 
Sultan and his most able general soon became the common 
talk of the Dekhan, and Amir Berid, now ruling at Bidar, and 
Burhan Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar, Ibrahim's uncle, joined 
forces and marched to lay siege to Bijapur, partly with a view 
of wiping off old scores, and partly to win back certain districts 
round Sholapur which had been disputed territory for many 
years. On the way they passed through the jagir of Asad 
Khan, who thought it politic to make a pretence of joining 
hands with them, but secretly despatched a trusted messenger 
to Ismail Shah of Berar, another of Ibrahim's uncles by mar- 
riage, asking him to come to his sovereign's aid. As soon 
as the Berar army moved to attack Kulbarga Asad Khan 
joined it and Bijapur was relieved. This signal proof of Asad 
Khan's loyalty brought about a reconciliation between him and 

395 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Ibrahim, and peace between Bijapur and its northern rivals 
was hastened by the sudden death of Amir Berid. Foiled in 
his plans by this turn of events, the Shah of Ahmadnagar now 
formed an alliance with the Raja of Vijayanagar and the Shah 
of Golconda. Ibrahim was now attacked from the north, 
south, and east. In this predicament he again sought counsel 
with Asad Khan, and acting on his advice succeeded in 
breaking up the confederacy by ceding the disputed Sholapur 
districts to Burhan Nizam Shah and making some concessions 
to the Raja of Vijayanagar. Asad Khan then marched against 
the Shah of Golconda, and after punishing him severely 
returned in triumph to BijapGr. 

The Ahmadnagar Shah, however, encouraged by his partial 
success, soon renewed hostilities and attempted to seize the 
former capital of the Bahmani Sultans, Kulbarga, which was 
now a part of the Bijapur possessions ; but Ibrahim with Asad 
Khan's assistance inflicted a severe defeat upon him, capturing 
250 elephants and 170 cannon, besides Burhan Nizam Shah's 
camp equipage and royal insignia. Elated by this victory, 
Ibrahim began to create new enemies at home by his tyrannical 
conduct towards his own subjects, and so disgusted both his 
Musalman officers and the Brahman civilians that a conspiracy 
was formed to dethrone him in favour of his brother, Abdulla. 
The plot was discovered and Abdulla fled to Goa, where he 
was well received by the Portuguese. Ibrahim vented his 
rage upon the Brahman police officials, several of whom were 
put to death with excruciating tortures in the great square of 
Bijapur. His inveterate suspicions of Asad Khan revived, 
and again the old general retired in disgust to his Belgaum 
jagir. 

In the meantime Burhan Nizam Shah had been busy in 
aggravating his nephew's troubles by laying waste the Bijapur 
territories and inflicting several defeats upon Ibrahim's armies, 
while the Portuguese, whose trade with Southern India was 
menaced by the hostility of Bijapur, did their best to add fuel 
to the fire. Abdulla from his safe retreat at Goa entered into 
negotiations with Burhan Nizam Shah to obtain the latter's 



TURKISH DYNASTY OF BIJAPUR 

assistance in dethroning his brother. The Portuguese promised 
their help provided that Ibrahim's chief support, Asad Khan, 
could be won over. The Shah of Ahmadnagar accordingly- 
sent one of his most trusted Brahman advisers to open negotia- 
tions with Asad Khan ; but the steadfast loyalty of the old 
chieftain was not to be shaken. Indignant at the reflection 
upon his honour, he ordered the Brahman, if he valued his 
life, to get out of his sight and quit Belgaum with the least 
possible delay, lest his anger should get the better of his respect 
for the laws of civilised nations which safeguarded the persons 
of royal envoys. Burhan Nizam Shah, in spite of this rebuff, 
proceeded with his plans, and the Portuguese, finding that 
most of the nobles of Bijapur were in sympathy with Prince 
Abdulla, openly espoused his cause. 

At this crisis Asad Khan became seriously ill, and Burhan 
Nizam Shah, in expectation of his death, instead of marching 
straight to Bijapur, where the discontented nobles were pre- 
pared to proclaim Prince Abdulla as Sultan, turned aside to 
take possession of Asad Khan's fortress and valuable estates. 
The delay was fatal to the success of the campaign. The 
Brahman envoy who was sent again with the object of seducing 
Asad Khan's retainers by bribes was seized and put to death. 
Ibrahim marched his army to the relief of Belgaum, and though 
Asad IChan died before the Sultan arrived, the Portuguese 
thought it prudent to return to Goa, and the other confederates 
retreated also. Burhan Nizam Shah now fell back upon the 
assistance of the Raja of Vijayanagar, and a new plan of 
campaign was made by which Ahmadnagar was first to attack 
the son of the late Amir Berid of Bidar, who had allied himself 
with Ibrahim. This plan was successful in drawing the 
Bijapur army into the field, and in a great battle near Kallian 
Ibrahim's forces were routed and the Sultan himself, surprised 
while taking his bath, narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. 
Ramraj then recaptured the fortress of Mudkal and Raichor. 
His Muhammadan ally retook Sholapur. 

The fate of the Bijapur dynasty was again hanging in the 
balance, when Burhan Nizam Shah died. Ibrahim succeeded 

397 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

in patching up a peace with his son and successor, Husain 
Nizam Shah, who was Burhan's son by his favourite wife, a 
dancing-girl called Amina. At the same time Ibrahim made, 
as before, a temporary accommodation with the Raja of 
Vijayanagar, who having no reason to love his Musalman 
alhes was strictly opportunist in his policy. Ibrahim's next 
move was to attempt to recover the much-prized districts of 
Sholapur by playing with conspirators at the Ahmadnagar 
court who wished to supplant Husain by his half-brother, Ali, 
son of the late Shah of Ahmadnagar by the Princess Miriam 
of Bijapur. He succeeded in bringing over to his camp a 
powerful ally in the person of Burhan Nizam Shah's late 
commander-in-chief, Ain-ul-Mulk, but Ibrahim's suspicions 
and violent character soon made an enemy of him, and after 
being defeated both by Husain Nizam Shah and by the rebel 
general, the Sultan of Bijapur was again besieged in his capital 
and compelled to appeal to his Hindu neighbours for help. 
Ramraj responded to the call and put the besieging army to 
flight. Ibrahim soon afterwards ended his days in a prolonged 
fit of rage, during which he caused several of the court physi- 
cians to be executed and others to be trodden under the feet 
of elephants. The rest of the medical profession of Bijapur 
fled precipitately from the city to escape similar treatment. 



398 



CHAPTER X 
FALL OF VIJAYANAGAR 

AIvI 'ADIIv SHAH, Ibrahim's son, ascended the throne 
of Bijapur in 1557, an operation performed with less 
difficulty than was usual in Muhammadan courts of 
the period, as he had carefully prepared for the event of his 
father's death, and the partisans of the Shi ah sect to which 
he belonged rallied round his standard immediately it was 
raised. The Khutba, or prayer for the Sultan, was read in 
the mosques according to the Shiah formula as in the days 
of his grandfather, Ismail ' Adil Shah, and forty persons followed 
in the new Sultan's train wherever he appeared abroad to utter 
curses against the Sahiba,^ a custom calculated to arouse the 
fanatical spirit of the two chief Muhammadan sects. 

Ali 'Adil Shah's next step was to strengthen his somewhat 
precarious position by sending ambassadors to negotiate both 
with his father's ally, the Raja of Vijayanagar, and with the 
inveterate enemy of Bijapur, the Shah of Ahmadnagar. Ramraj 
responded in the most friendly spirit, while Husain Nizam Shah, 
viewing the overtures merely as an attempt to recover the 
territory which Ibrahim had lost, treated the envoys with 
marked coldness. Ali 'Adil Shah accordingly began to cultivate 
assiduously the friendship of his powerful Hindu neighbour. 
On the death of Ramraj 's son and heir, he went with an escort 
of only one hundred horse to express his condolences in person. 
The Raja received the Sultan with the greatest respect, and 
the Rani, touched by Ali 'Adil Shah's professions of sympathy, 
adopted him as her son. After staying three days as an 
honoured guest the Sultan took his leave. Ramraj did not, 

1 The first three KJialifs, who were the means of excluding Ali from the 
succession, 

399 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

however, observe Musalman court etiquette by conducting his 
guest outside the city walls — a fact remembered by Ali 'Adil 
Shah when he afterwards wanted an excuse for attacking the 
infidel. 

Having secured the support of the Vijayanagar armies, Ali 
'Adil Shah now sent Husain Nizam Shah a peremptory demand 
for the restoration of the forts and districts which had been 
wrested from Bijapur in the late Sultan's reign. The ulti- 
matum was rejected, and Ramraj joined Ali 'Adil Shah in 
overrunning the territories of Ahmadnagar right up to Daulata- 
bad, Musalman historians, as an excuse for Ali 'Adil Shah's 
later treachery, declare that the Vijayanagar troops on this 
occasion perpetrated frightful excesses against the Muham- 
madan population. If the charge were true, the Hindus might 
with good reason have appealed to the established traditions 
of Musalman warfare as their justification ; but modem history 
furnishes so many instances of unfounded charges of a like 
character being brought forward as the excuse for broken 
faith and reckless inhumanity that some degree of scepticism 
on this point would be judicious. 

Husain Nizam Shah bought peace by the cession of the fort 
of Kallian, but immediately the enemy had retired he persuaded 
his neighbour, Ibrahim Qutb Shah of Golconda, to join with 
him in trying to recapture it. Ali 'Adil Shah again obtained 
assistance from Ramraj, and persuaded Ali Berid Shah of 
Bidar to join him also. The Golconda Shah thereupon changed 
sides, and Husain Nizam Shah was again besieged by the 
allied Hindu and Musalman armies. But when the monsoon 
rains began to hamper the besiegers the inevitable jealousies 
and intrigues engendered by such a combination of forces had 
their effect upon the policy of the allies. The Musalman 
chieftains were disgusted by the preponderating influence of 
Ramraj in the affairs of the Dekhan, and doubtless the caste 
prejudices of the Hindus caused dissensions in the camp, for 
complaints were made of their overweening arrogance. Ramraj, 
moreover, in return for his services, expected certain readjust- 
ments of frontiers at the expense of BijapHr and Golconda, 
400 



FALL OF VIJAYANAGAR 

which the Musalman monarchs pretended to regard as an 
insolent encroachment on the rights of Islam. 

Ramraj withdrew his army to Vijayanagar, and Ali 'Adil 
Shah summoned a council to consider measures for the protec- 
tion of the faithful against the oppression of the infidel. It 
was agreed that it was meritorious and highly politic to destroy 
the power of the common enemy of all the Musalman monarchs 
of the Dekhan ; but the great economic resources of Southern 
India enabled Ramraj to maintain armies of such strength 
that none of the Musalman kingdoms could hope to contend 
against him singly. It was necessary to form a Pan-Islamic 
league, so that the strength of the united armies of the Dekhan 
could be brought into the field. Ali Adil Shah then sounded 
Ibrahim Qutb Shah as to the possibility of such a league, and 
the Golconda Shah, delighted with the proposal, sent an envoy 
to Ahmadnagar. Husain Nizam Shah was naturally pleased 
with the prospect of breaking up the powerful confederacy 
against himself and promptly agreed to a treaty of eternal 
friendship with BijapGr. The terms of the treaty were that 
his daughter, Chand Bibi, should be given in marriage to Ali 
Adil Shah, with the fortress of vSholapur as dowry — an arrange- 
ment which settled the chronic disputes between Ahmadnagar 
and Bijapur ; secondly, that Ali 'Adil Shah's sister, Hadia 
Sultana, should marry Husain's eldest son. Prince Mutarza ; 
and, thirdly, that all the new allies should march against 
Ramraj at the earliest possible moment. 

As soon as the diplomatists had brought the negotiations 
to this highly satisfactory conclusion, Ali 'Adil Shah immediately 
made his preparations for war and broke with his old ally by 
Isending an envoy with a demand for the restoration of Mudkal, 
jRaichor, and other forts which had formerly belonged to 
Bijapur. Ramraj 's indignant refusal was, of course, the casus 
belli which diplomatic etiquette required. The allies marshalled 
their armies on the plains outside Bijapur in December 1564, 
and shortly afterwards the great decisive battle was fought 
near Talikota, on the banks of the Krishna. Ramraj, then 
seventy years of age, showed conspicuous courage ; at one 

2C 401 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

time it seemed as if the Hindus liad won the day, for Ali 'Adil 
Shah and his confederate of Golconda prepared to retreat. 
But at the crisis of the battle Ramraj was surrounded and 
taken prisoner. He was brought before Husain Nizam Shah, 
who immediately ordered his head to be cut off and exhibited 
on a long spear in front of the enemy. The Hindus were panic- 
stricken at the death of their Raja and fled in disorder. The 
usual massacre of the infidel followed. One hundred thousand, 
says Ferishta, were slain during the battle and in the pursuit 
afterwards. The same authority explains that the disaster to 
the Vijayanagar army was due to an unruly elephant, but a 
European traveller, Caesar Frederick, who visited Vijayanagar 
two years after the battle, was told that it was caused by the 
treachery of the Raja's Muhammadan officers, which under 
all the circumstances seems more probable, for it is unlikely 
that Ali 'Adil Shah and his confederates neglected obvious 
measures for tampering with the loyalty of Ramraj 's Musalman 
body-guard. 

The sack of Vijayanagar which followed the battle of Talikota 
revived the glorious memories of Mahmud of Ghazni. It was 
one of the most populous and richest cities of Asia. Paez, the 
Portuguese traveller, who visited it early in the sixteenth 
century, describes it as being " as large as Rome and very 
beautiful to the sight." It was a garden city, laid out accord- 
ing to the old Indian traditions with spacious parks and 
orchards. There were, he said, " many groves of trees within 
it and many conduits of water which flow into the midst of it, 
and in places there are lakes ; and the King has close to his 
palace a palm-grove and other rich-bearing fruit-trees." Below 
the quarter set apart for the Raja's Muhammadan bod^^-guard 
there was a little river, and on this side there were many 
orchards and gardens with many fruit-trees, for the most part 
mangoes and areca-palms and jack-trees, but also many lime- 
and orange-trees, growing so closely to one another that the 
quarter looked like a thick forest. He noticed also the cultiva- 
tion of white grapes. Paez was greatly impressed by the 
density of the population — no troops, horse or foot, he said, 
402 



FALL OF VIJAYANAGAR 

could force their way through them, so great was the throng 
of people and elephants. " It was the best provided city in 
the world ; stocked with provisions of every kind." There 
were broad and beautiful streets full of fine houses in which 
the wealthy merchants and principal craftsmen lived — for it 
was the chief trading and industrial centre of Southern India. 
The palace of the Raja enclosed a space " greater than all the 
castle of Lisbon," and besides the bustling activity of the bazars 
Paez observed a vast crowd, which he estimated at fifteen to 
twenty thousand men, engaged in extending or repairing the 
great irrigation works which supplied the whole city with water. 
Paez was an observer, it should be noted, acquainted with the 
great cities of Italy in the palmy days of the Renaissance. 

The victors, besides plundering the city, razing the chief 
buildings to the ground, and committing, as Ferishta states, 
" every species of excess," perpetuated the memory of their ^ 
triumph in the grossest manner by preserving the head of 
their great antagonist as a trophy and exhibiting it publicly, 
covered with oil and red pigment, on the anniversary day of 
the battle — a barbarous custom piously observed by the 
Muhammadans of Ahmadnagar for over two and a half centuries 
after the famous battle. The empire of Vijayanagar never 
recovered the blow inflicted on it at Talikota. Neither did the 
Pan-Islamic league of the Dekhan long survive the death of the 
Ahmadnagar Sultan, Husain Nizam Shah, which followed soon 
afterwards. When Ali 'Adil Shah attempted to follow up his 
triumph by acquiring more of the Vijayanagar territories, 
Venkatadri, the late Raja's brother, obtained the assistance 
of the Ahmadnagar army in defeating the Bijapur Sultan's 
ambitions — a fact which shows clearly that religious differences 
had very little to do either with the conflict between Vijayana- 
gar and the Muhammadan rulers of the Dekhan, or with the 
disputes between the different Musalman dynasties,^ though 

^ Talboys Wheeler summarises the whole history of the period under the 
title of " The Shiah Revolt in the Dekhan," making this ' revolt' the anti- 
thesis of the Sunni conquest of the Panjab and Hindustan, a sectarian view 
which totally misrepresents the dominant political factors in the struggle 
between Islam and Hindmsm. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

religion was often used as the most convenient peg for hanging 
them on. It is most significant that in this ' holy war ' of the 
Muhammadan rulers of the Dekhan the Hindu cavalry of 
Maharashtra continued to serve the Sultan of Bijapur. 

The constant appeals of Miihammadan writers to the sanction 
of the Almighty for the acts of the political leaders of Islam 
tend to confuse the real differences of thought and of tempera- 
ment which, after three centuries of close contact, continued 
to bring Hindus and Musalmans into deadly conflict with each 
other. In both communities there were men of the highest 
religious ideals, but the facts disclosed by Muhammadan his- 
torians show that the differences between them were socio- 
logical and political rather than religious. Islam was an 
individualistic cult, and especially a protest against the 
restraints which an older and more developed civilisation — 
in the interest of the whole community — ^placed upon indi- 
vidual liberty. In theory, at least, all men within the fold 
of Islam were equal. The reward of the faithful was an 
unbounded enjoyment of the present life and Paradise here- 
after, and a part of this reward was the right to rule over all 
who were not of the fold, so that they too might increase 
the happiness and wealth of the elect. The rules of conduct 
which regulated Musalman society did not necessarily apply 
to the treatment of non-Musalmans. Such rights as the 
latter, individually or collectively, might possess were of the 
nature of benevolences contingent upon their good behaviour 
and the will of God, represented by the sword of Islam. 

The Musalman political code was a sanctification of the 
doctrine that might is right. The Sultan's slave was a divinely 
appointed ruler, provided that he could wield the sword better 
than his master and produce a pedigree proving his descent 
from the Prophet. Pedigrees of this kind were as easily fur- 
nished as the family portraits of the modern nouveaux riches ; 
and the divine authority which put no limit to the ambitions 
of a successful general made a virtue of conspiracy against the 
throne and multiplied petty autocracies indefinitely. The 
Hindu political system, built upon the bedrock of the free 
404 



I 



HINDU & MUHAMMADAN POLITICS 

village community, was essentially an imperial democracy. 
Whether it was a great empire or a petty kingdom it never 
lost the democratic character which belonged to it. The 
Muhammadan system, based upon a fiction of social freedom, 
gave a slave leave to rule the world, but took away from the 
community its liberty and right of self-government. These 
were the vital points at issue between Hindu and Muhammadan 
states. On both sides religious principles were involved, but not 
those upon which Brahmans and mullas disputed. It needed 
a statesman of Akbar's genius to reconcile the differences. 

The sovereign in both the Hindu and Muhammadan political 
systems was the representative of divine justice, but in the 
opinion of most Muhammadan writers of the period a liberal 
and fair distribution of the spoils of war among the elect 
covered a multitude of moral failings. The stain upon Mahmud 
of Ghazni's character was not that he massacred tens of 
thousands of non-combatants, but that he kept too much of 
the spoil for himself. The grave offence of the Raja of Vija- 
yanagar was not that he was an infidel, but that being such he 
was more wealthy and powerful than any Muhammadan ruler 
in the Dekhan. He was also a high-caste Hindu whose social 
etiquette was a standing offence to the feelings of the Musalman 
freeman, however much he might try to avoid hurting them. 

The quarrels between the different Musalman rulers had as 
little to do with sectarian differences of the mullas. The Turk 
hated the Mogul, the Afghan the Turk, the Abyssinian the 
Arab, and the native-born Musalman all the foreign mercenaries 
who had no root in the soil but boasted of their martial deeds 
and claimed the lion's share of the booty. The great problem 
of Mvisalman statecraft in the Dekhan was to reconcile the 
conflicting interests of the different military factions, rather 
than to steer straight between Sunni and Shiah sectarians. 

The effect of the Musalman poHtical creed upon Hindu social 
life was twofold : it increased the rigour of the caste system 
and aroused a revolt against it. The alluring prospect which 
it held out to the lower strata of Hindu society was as tempting 
as it was to the Bedouins of the desert and the nomads of 

405 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Central Asia, who could enjoy to the full the pleasures of city- 
life, but had not the industry and ability to build cities for 
themselves. Islam gave the nomad a divine command to 
force the infidels to build for them and fight for them, made 
the Sudra a freeman and potentially a lord of Brahmans. 
lyike the Renaissance of Europe it stirred up the intellectual 
waters, produced many strong men and some men of striking 
originality and genius. Like the Renaissance, also, it was 
essentially a city cult ; it made the nomad leave his tents 
and the Sudra abandon his village. It developed a type of 
humanity full of joie de vivre, eager to hunt and fight and keen 
for adventure of every kind, a man of epicurean tastes and 
many dilettante accomplishments. But it left the heart of 
India unchanged. Islam built its splendid mosques and tombs 
in the city, but the village temple remained. 

Ali 'Adil Shah, with his treasury filled to overflowing with 
the immense wealth of Vijayanagar, set his captive Hindu 
craftsmen to work, according to the usual practice of Muham- 
madan conquerors, in building a great mosque to celebrate his 
triumph and in making his capital vie in splendour with the 
finest of Indian cities. A comparison of Ali 'Adil Shah's mosque 
with the mosque built by Ramraj for his Musalman mercenaries 
(now known as ' the Elephant Stables ') shows clearly the origin 
of the great school of architecture subsequently developed at 
Bijapur. Its distinctively Indian character was due to the 
fact that Bijapur was further removed from Persian influences 
than the great Muhammadan centres of Northern India. After 
the fall of the Bijapur dynasty the royal craftsmen of Southern 
India assisted in the creation of the Taj Mahall at Agra.^ 

Before Ali 'Adil Shah died a shameful death in 1580 all the 
old quarrels of the Musalman states of the Dekhan were revived. 
But the Mogul dynasty of Hindustan had by that time become 
the dominant political power in India, and Akbar had already 
begun to rebuild a great empire upon the ancient Indo-Aryan 
foundation. 

^ A detailed analysis of Bijapur architecture is given in the author's Indian 
Architecture (Murray). 
406 




w 
i-r 

K 
W 



I 



CHAPTER XI 

HINDU INDIA IN THE MUHAMMADAN 
PERIOD— CHAITANYA 

IT would give a very imperfect impression of Indian life 
in early Muhammadan times if it were assumed that 
the somewhat sordid record of Muhammadan dynasties 
contained all that is most important to remember in the 
history of the period and absorbed the greater part of the 
intellectual activities of the people. In truth the real India, 
though deeply affected politically and economically by the 
impact of Islam, continued to live its own life in the villages, 
and outside the city walls the vast majority of the Indian 
population paid unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but 
were spiritually unaffected by the presence of the foreign 
conquerors. True, a devastating army might ravage whole 
districts, burn the villages, and bring death, or worse, in its 
train ; but these were temporary visitations like plague, earth- 
quake, or famine. The brutal soldiery were not quartered 
upon the villagers — ^they came and went like a cyclone. There 
was no costly furniture or elaborate upholstery to be replaced : 
the mud and thatch cottages were quickly rebuilt. The 
Mother's loving care would soon efface the marks of the 
Destroyer's wrath. The old religion of the Aryan village had 
a recuperative power stronger than all the armies of Islam. 
The Musalman zamindars or governors might squeeze the 
industrious peasantry, but they lived apart from them and 
rarely interfered with their daily life. There was always 
safety in numbers, and for his own peace and comfort even the 
most uncompromising Musalman put a limit to his exactions. 
So when the storm blew over, the Hindu villagers who then, 
as now, formed the vast majority of the Indian population 

407 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

returned to their usual life. The victories of the Musalman 
warriors, which formed the theme of the court poet and his- 
torian, were unnoticed in the records of the village handed 
down in song and story from one generation to another. The 
village kathaks still sang the praises of Rama and Krishna 
and of the heroes of the Mahabharata, of Vikramaditya and 
Prithivi-raja ; and though the gossip of the Sultan's court 
might often circulate among the crowd of listeners gathered 
under the pipal-tree or in the temple mandapam, yet the 
devoted loves of Satyavana and Savitri, of Nala and Damayanti, 
the constancy of King Shivi and the trials of Prahlada, told 
and retold to countless generations of villagers, never lost 
their interest. Foreign jargon, borrowed from the language 
of the court, crept into the vernaculars ; but these importations 
were all related to camp and city life — the language of the 
countryside remained unaltered.^ 

It must not be supposed, however, that Islam in India 
appropriated all the civic culture which had been developed 
during the man^^ previous centuries of Indo-Aryan rule. In 
the deeper sense India was never conquered. Islam seized 
her political capitals, controlled her military forces, and appro- 
priated her revenues, but India retained what she cherished 
most, her intellectual empire, and her soul was never subdued. 
Her great university cities lost to a great extent their political 
influence ; some changed their sites, as they had often done 
before ; others, like Benares, Kanchi, and Nudiah, were less 
populous and wealthy, but remained as the historic seats of 
Hindu learning. M^ahayana Buddhism removed its intellectual 
centre to Southern China. Nalanda and Taksha-sila crumbled 
into dust ; but Hindu pandits in the Sanskrit Tols continued 
the pious work of the Buddhist monks, and throughout the 
Muhammadan period these centres of intellectual India pro- 
duced a succession of great teachers to hand on the torch of 
Indo-Aryan wisdom to posterity. 

^ D. C. Sen, History oj Bengali Language and Literature, pp. 382-383. The 
statement quoted relates only to village life in Bengal, but it is undoubtedly 
applicable to the greater part of India. 
408 



CHAITANYA 

And, excluding the small minority of the military classes 
attached to the soil who took service under the foreign con- 
querors and adopted their religion, the spiritual life of the 
village was totally unaffected by the change of rulers, except 
that the employment of Brahmans as the agents of Muham- 
madan revenue administration placed in their hands more 
power over the village communities and certainly tended to 
lower the high ideals of the Brahmanical order, even though 
the good sense of the people could easily discriminate between 
the excisemen and their spiritual teachers. In educational 
matters the Muhammadan rulers with few exceptions left the 
infidels to their own heretical devices — ^the schools they estab- 
lished were only for true believers. But the court language, 
Persian, was taught to Hindu children in some of their own 
village schools for the same reason as English is now taught, 
because it was the medium of communication between the 
people and the ruling powers, and because it opened the door 
to official employment. 

Every Hindu village had its own schoolmaster, whose income 
was derived either from the lands assigned for the upkeep of 
the temple or from a fixed share in the village harvest. Gene- 
rally the schoolmaster was also the village priest and Brahman ; 
and as every Hindu teacher would regard all knowledge as 
religious, so the elementary instruction in reading, writing, and 
arithmetic, and perhaps Sanskrit grammar and poetry, given 
in the village schools was invariably of a religious character, 
though the higher spiritual truths were reserved for the Sanskrit 
Tols, which took up the work of higher education when the 
Buddhist monasteries were broken up. The village schools 
were open to all Hindus within the Aryan pale, i.e. those of 
the four ' pure ' castes. Every great wave of religious feeling 
which passed over India helped to break down the obstacles 
which Brahman prejudices placed in the way of the higher 
education of the masses; for it was not only the Buddha 
who taught higher Aryan truths to Sudras : Sankaracharya, 
Ramanuja, and all the great Vaishnava teachers did the 
same, under conditions intended to provide against the 

409 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

prostitution of spiritual and intellectual power for immoral 
purposes. 

It is in the history of one of these great movements, that 
of which Chaitanya was the leader, that we get a glimpse of 
the inner life of Hindu India during the Muhammadan period. 
Chaitanya, the great Vaishnava apostle of Bengal, was born 
at Navadwipa, or Nudiah, in i486, about the time when 
Sikandar lyodi, the Sultan of Delhi, was bitterly persecuting 
his Hindu subjects, after his father, Behlol Khan, had driven 
the wise and tolerant Sultan Husain Shah from the throne of 
Jaunpur. Nudiah in the twelfth century had some political 
importance as the capital of the last Hindu raja of the Sena 
dynasty, Rai lyakhsmaniya ; in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries it was still famous as an educational centre, especially 
for its school of logic, known as the Navya Nyaya System. 
In spite of political changes Nudiah remained a flourishing 
city, for its Sanskrit Tols drew Hindu students from all parts 
of India, and to have been a scholar of Nudiah was in itself 
a mark of distinction in the highest Hindu society.^ It covered 
an area of sixteen square miles and was divided into sixteen 
wards. Here Hinduism continued to follow its own civic life 
and to pay its devotions to Sarasvati, the Goddess of Ivcarn- 
ing, in its accustomed manner, regardless of the Musalman 
conqueror. 

Chaitanya's father, Jagannath Mishra, was a Brahman who 
had come to NGdiah from Sylhet to complete his education, 
had married the daughter of a well-known pandit, and had 
settled down to the life of a Hindu householder in the shelter 
which a university city afforded even in those troublous times. 
He had ten children, eight daughters, who all died in infancy, 
and two sons, the elder named Vishvarupa, and the younger 
Vishvambara, afterwards known as Chaitanya. Vishvarupa 
was to have been married when he was sixteen years of age, 
but the religious atmosphere of Nudiah had infected the lad's 
mind, and the night before the marriage was to have been 
celebrated he disappeared. lyike the Buddha he had taken 

^ D. C. Sen, Hisioyy of Bengali Language and Literature, p. 410. 
410 



CHAITANYA 

the vow of asceticism, and with the pilgrim's staff and begging- 
bowl in hand had set out on the sannyasin's spiritual quest. 
UnUke the Buddha he never returned to his grief -stricken 
home, and Vishvambara, affectionately called Nimai, because 
he was born in a shed under a nimba tree,^ remained the 
sole solace of his parents. Nimai was then five years old, the 
age when he should have gone to school, but owing to the 
objections of his mother, Shachi Devi, who was haunted by 
the fear that her darling child would follow his brother's 
example, he was kept at home. 

Nimai soon became the terror of pious and learned Brahmans, 
and outraged all the sedate and orderly social traditions of the 
quarter by his boyish pranks. He joined with other boys in 
robbing orchards and in other petty pilfering ; he teased little 
girls ; and even dared to disturb elderly Brahmans at their 
devotions by running away with their ritualistic symbols, or 
by hiding their clothing when they were bathing. He grieved 
his Brahman parents by a total disregard of caste prejudices, 
never avoiding unclean refuse or other things which were 
pollution to the twice-born. When reproved he would say : 
" You do not send me to school, so how can I know what is 
clean or unclean ? In my eyes nothing is pure or impure — 
all things are alike to me " — an answer which only added to 
his parents' sorrow, for it revealed the mind of the true sann- 
yasin, placed above the restrictions of caste rules. These and 
similar wise sayings, presaging his coming mission, were 
treasured up in his parents' hearts and remembered in after 
years. 

At last Jagannath's neighbours insisted that he should fulfil 
his duty as a Brahman by sending the boy to school, and 
Nimai at six years of age was placed in one of the Sanskrit 
Tols under a pandit named Ganga Das and entered upon the 
first stage of a Brahman's life, that of a Brahmacharin, 

It must be observed that throughout the whole story of 

^ See Mr D. C. Sen in his Histoty of Bengali Language and Literature, p. 415. 
According to Professor J adunath Sarkar the signification of the name is ' short- 
lived,' and it was given to him to avert the evil eye. 

411 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Chaitanya's life there is a vein of the miraculous, for no ordinarj^ 
child woiild begin what is in reality college life at that age. 
But Nimai was of extraordinary precocity, and in a very short 
time was engaged in disputes with men of learning upon the 
intricacies of Sanskrit grammar and logic, though he still 
retained all the vivacity of boyhood and delighted in poking 
fun at the grave and reverend dons of Nudiah. When he was 
twenty, or at an age when many Brahman youths would be 
seeking entrance into a Tol for the completion of their educa- 
tion, Nimai had acquired so great a reputation that he estab- 
lished a Tol of his own on the banks of the Bhagirathi, the 
branch of the Ganges which flows by Nudiah, and many pupils 
gathered round him, for he was famed for his wit and the 
brilliancy of his dialectics. 

Up to this time Nimai's intellect had not developed the cha- 
racteristic bent which distinguished his teaching as a Vaish- 
nava reformer. The scholars of Nudiah at that time were 
known for their highly intellectual accomplishments rather 
than for depth of religious fervour. An atmosphere of scepti- 
cism, created by the agnostic teaching of Buddhism, pervaded 
the Tols of Nudiah, and Nimai had imbibed all the intellectual 
pride of his Alma Mater. The chief interest of Nudiah societ}^ 
was in passages of arms between famous philosophical experts 
armed with their favourite weapons of logic — an interest shared 
by all educated Hindus at that time. " No extraordinan- 
marriage function could in those days be regarded as complete 
without its battle of the pundits. Invitations were sent out 
to members of rival schools to come and join their forces under 
the presidency and direction of such and such a Brahman. 
The contest would take place in the presence of the whole polite 
world, who, though they could not have waged it themselves, 
had quite sufficient knowledge of the language and matter 
under dispute to be keen and interested critics of skill. Put 
thus upon their mettle, the combatants would wrestle, and at 
the end of days or hours, as the case might be, the victor was 
declared. Sometimes the whole of the money grant about' 
to be made by the father of the bride would be assigned by 
412 



CHAITANYA 

him to the chief of the pundits. This would be for a signal 
and crushing victory. More often it would be a proportion 
of three-quarters, five-eighths, or even fifteen-sixteenths. . . . 
As in the tournaments of European chivalry the appearance 
of the unknown knight might at any moment occur, so here 
also one never knew whether some stranger of genius might 
not upset the best-calculated chances. The savant must be 
prepared to defend his own pre-eminence against all comers, 
and against every conceivable method, new or old." ^ 

In the greater contests, where the reputation of a famous 
university or of a well-known school of philosophy was at 
stake, the names of the victors and their literary works would 
be piously handed down to posterity, while no one except 
court poets and historians thought it worth while to perpetuate 
the memory of the contemporary war-lords and their tale of 
bloodshed and desolation. Thus it is that India has so 
little to tell of that side of her national history which forms 
the main theme of Western historians. 

Several of the incidents recorded of Chaitanya's university 
life relate to intellectual bouts in which he defeated famous 
scholars of his day, representing Benares and other great seats 
of learning, who came to Nudiah to win from her chosen 
champions the customary ' letters of victory,' by which the 
vanquished acknowledged the superior skill of their antagonists 
in logic, grammar, rhetoric, and similar subjects. Such proofs 
of intellectual ability and profound scholarship were regarded 
as indispensable qualifications for any teacher of Hindu 
religion. 

Nimai, having established his fame as a pandit by over- 
throwing Keshava Kashmiri — an intellectual knight-errant who 
after winning many contests in other parts of India had come 
to Nudiah as the champion of all India — married and settled 
down as a householder, the second stage of a Brahman's life. 
His father died about the same time, and on his return from 
a successful tour through Eastern Bengal, in which he added 
to his scholastic reputation, he found that his wife had died 

^ Sister Nivedita, Footfalls of Indian History, pp. 237-238. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

from snake-bite. To console his mother's grief he married 
again, but soon started off, with his mother's reluctant consent, 
on a pilgrimage to Gaya to make the customary Pinda offerings 
so that his father's spirit might gain an easy passage to heaven. 

This visit to Gaya vas the turning-point of his life. Here 
he came under the influence of a venerable Vaishnava guru, 
Ishvara Puri, and adopted his teaching of the bhakti cult 
associated with the name of Krishna and the doctrine of the 
Bhagavad Gita. Falling into a profound trance before the 
image of Krishna at the great temple which marked the site 
of the Buddha's enlightenment, he saw, like Arjuna, a vision 
of Krishna as Lord of the Universe. When he returned to 
consciousness on the banks of the Bhagirathi — for his com- 
panions had meanwhile carried him back to his Tol at Nudiah — 
his whole spiritual outlook was changed. No longer the proud 
Brahman pandit conscious of his intellectual superiority whose 
chief delight was to confound an opponent by argument, he 
would spend hours only chanting the praises of Krishna and 
speaking of divine love. Love was the divine power which 
upheld the universe, caused the sun and moon to shine, kept 
the stars in their courses, and made the earth bring forth its 
fruits in due season. For man's happiness and spiritual 
wisdom love was all-sufficient. Even the outcaste was superior 
to the most learned Brahman if he were pious and had the 
love of God. But only when man and woman appear the 
same, and sex loses all its charm, could that love divine be 
realised. " Be like a tree," he said. " The tree gives shade 
even to him who cuts its boughs. It asks no water of anyone, 
though it be withering for want of it. Rain and storm and 
the burning rays of the sun it suffers, yet continues to give 
sweet-scented flowers and delicious fruits. Patiently serve 
others, even as a tree, and let this be your motto." ^ 

To enforce the moral of his teaching by example he would 
go down to the river and help the old and infirm to carry their 
burdens or wash their clothes, regardless of the rules of his 
caste ; and when anyone out of respect for his Brahmanhood 

^ D. C. Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature, p. 429. 
414 



CHAITANYA 

hesitated to accept his services he would say : " Do not, I 
pray you, prevent me. When I serve you I see God : these 
Httle deeds are hoHness for me." ^ 

The change which took place in Nimai's spiritual attitude 
is illustrated by an incident which occurred on one of his 
pilgrimages. He joined a crowd collected round a Brahman 
in a temple who with tears pouring down his face was reciting 
the Gita with intense rapture, heedless of the ridicule and 
laughter which greeted the numerous mistakes of intonation 
and grammar which he was making. Nimai in his pandit 
days would likewise have scoffed at the Brahman's ignorance, 
but now he was deeply touched. " Tell me, sir," he said, 
" what deep meaning do you find in these words to inspire 
you to such rapture ? " The Brahman replied : " Sir, I am 
very ignorant and do not know the meaning of the words. 
But my heart is full of joy when I see Krishna, dark ^ and 
beautiful, sitting in Arjuna's chariot teaching divine truth. 
I can never cease reading the Gita, because I always behold 
Him when I am reading the book." Chaitanya, as he was then 
called, embraced the Brahman and said : " You only are truly 
worthy to read the Gita, as you have understood the essence 
of its meaning." ^ 

His pride in his dialectical powers completely disappeared, 
and his teaching now centred upon the concept of the barren- 
ness of abstract philosophy. Often he would decline to enter 
into controversy on religious subjects and expressed his willing- 
ness to acknowledge his opponent's superiority in argument 
by the formal ' letter of victory,' taking his stand upon the 
issue that " the love of God passeth all understanding." Instead 
of the ritual of orthodox Brahmanism with all its comphcated 
symbolism he organised Sdn-kirtana * parties of singers and 

^ D. C. Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature, p. 429. 

2 The idea of Krishna's dark complexion had nothing to do with the racial 
question. As the Universal Lord, Krishna was connected with the Vedic 
concept of Eternity or the Cosmic Slumber — Narayana — and with Vishnu- 
Surya, the midday sun. His colour symbol was therefore either black, like 
the moonless night, or azure blue, like the sky at noon. See diagram, p. 30, 

^ Jadunath Sarkar, Chaitanya s Pilgrimages and Teachings, p. 88. 

* Chanting God's name. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

dancers which, headed by himself and his chief disciple, Nit- 
yananda, assembled in the mandapams of temples or court- 
yards of houses and went in procession through the streets 
chanting the praise of God and His love for mankind. 

The Brahman aristocracy of Nudiah were unmoved by the 
emotional fervour of the young reformer's religious teaching, 
but were greatly perturbed by the excitement it caused and 
by the crowds of all classes, especially of the lower castes, 
which followed Nimai in the processions. Nimai's open defi- 
ance of caste rules disgusted them, and the excited crowds of 
singers and dancers outraged their sense of academic propriety. 
Finding that Nimai remained indifferent to their protests and 
threats of spiritual pains and penalties, they appealed at last 
to the civil power, the Muhammadan Qazi, to enforce respect 
for the ancient traditions of Nudiah by prohibiting Nimai's 
noisy demonstrations. The Qazi complied with their request 
and issued an order forbidding any more San-kirtana proces- 
sions. On the evening of the same day Nimai went to the 
court-house with a great crowd of followers and started the 
San-kirtana service at the Qazi's own door. The worthy 
magistrate came out in a rage to demand an explanation of 
this defiance of his orders, but, seeing the young Brahman 
standing in the midst of the crowd with his face lit up with 
divine ecstasy, he was so moved that he cancelled the prohibi- 
tion and sent the people away with his blessing. 

Chaitanya's relations with the Muhammadan officials in 
Bengal seem to have been on the whole friendly, and not a 
few Musalmans were among his followers. The Chaitdnya- 
charit-amrita, a work written half a century after his death, 
tells the story of the conversion of a Muhammadan governor 
in Bengal who having heard of the extraordinary power of the 
Brahman monk came privately to see him, gave him an escort 
of soldiers to protect him from river pirates, and accompanied 
him through the province he administered with as much devo- 
tion as any of Chaitanya's Hindu followers.^ At another time 

^ Chaitdnya-charit-amrita, translated by Professor Jadiinath Sarkar, pp. 
193-195- 
416 



CHAITANYA 

Chaitanya enrolled ten Pathan troopers among his disciples 
after convincing one of them by arguments based upon the 
Muslim scripture,^ He seems to have had more difficulty in 
overcoming the scepticism and intellectual pride of his fellow- 
Brahmans. It was their opposition which finally induced him 
to give up his Tol at Nudiah and to start on a pilgrimage to 
Brindaban, the scene of Krishna's early life, after having taken 
the sannyasin's vow of asceticism and adopted the name of 
Krishna-Chaitanya, by which he was thereafter known. 

So at the age of twenty-four years — a few years before 
Martin Luther began his attack upon the abuses of the Church 
of Rome — ^he set out on his great pilgrimage chanting the 
verse, " I too shall cross the terrible and dark ocean of life 
by devotion to the Supreme Being, as the sages did of yore, 
by service at the Lotus-feet of Mukunda," and accompanied by 
a devoted band of disciples. His mother hearing of his depar- 
ture went after him, and seeing him with the shaven head of 
a sannyasin was distracted with grief, for she feared that 
Nimai, like her other son, would be lost to her for ever. But 
Chaitanya, with the utmost tenderness, clasped his mother's 
feet and consoled her by promising to live wherever she might 
bid him and obey her wishes always, as he had done before. 
It was afterwards agreed between them that Chaitanya should 
make Puri his headquarters, so that his mother could easily 
get news of him and sometimes see him at Nudiah. 

The rest of his life Chaitanya spent in preaching the cult of 
bhakti according to the Vaishnava school of thought, and in 
devotion at the Jagannath temple at Puri. Everywhere he 
went his passionate outpouring of spirit kindled a great flame 
of religious fervour among the common folk, to whom the 
doctrine of Eternal Love always makes a stronger appeal than 
any other intellectual argument. During his lifetime his suc- 
cess as a religious teacher was probably as great as that of 
the Blessed One of Bodh-Gaya at whose temple he won en- 
lightenment. He travelled throughout the greater part of 
India, and was everywhere regarded by his followers as an 

^ Chaitdnya-charit-amriia, Sarkar's translation, p. 226. 

2D 417 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

incarnation of Vishnu and worshipped as the Deit}'-, as probably 
had been the case with Sakya Muni, in spite of the agnostic 
tone of his teaching. Numerous miracles are attributed to 
him. He often fell into a state of hypnotic trance, as in the 
yogin's samddhi. Like Muhammad he was subject to fits 
of epilepsy, which were regarded as special manifestations of 
divine inspiration. 

Chaitanya took special delight in the beauties of nature, and 
was intensely moved by the sight of a glorious sunset, of a 
noble river, or of a grove of asoka trees in full flush of flower. 
His power over wild beasts and all the denizens of the forest 
is said to have been marvellous. Elephants and tigers 
would join with the wild deer, who were drawn to his side by 
the sound of his sweet voice singing songs of divine love, and 
at the Master's command would trumpet or roar forth the name 
of Krishna, roll on the ground, and dance together with joy ; 
while the peacocks strutted proudly and joined their shrill 
notes to the songs of the other forest birds. Even the trees 
and creepers bowed themselves down to listen to his voice, 
and all things animate and inanimate united in the universal 
paean of love and praise. Chaitanya's mission called forth 
from the suffering masses a new outburst of that joie de vivre, 
so clearly manifested in the art of Sanchi and Ajanta, which 
the Buddha's mission had evoked ; only Chaitanya found no 
Asoka to establish his teaching upon an imperial footing by 
accepting it as the mainspring of State policy. Nevertheless 
there can be no doubt that his influence was felt by Akbar 
and his Muhammadan spiritual advisers when, fifty years 
after Chaitanya's death, they endeavoured to unite Islam and 
Hinduism in the cult of the Din-Ilahi, which made devotion 
to the State a bond of spiritual fellowship. 

Though this note of gladness rang through all Chaitanya's 
teaching and was its especial characteristic, he himself, like 
all great Indian teachers, lived an ascetic life and sternly 
reproved any form of self-indulgence on the part of those who 
wished to become partners in his lifework. Like the Saiva 
bhaktas of Southern India his whole missionary life was cou- 
418 



CHAITANYA 

secrated to works of charity and self-denial. The lowest menial 
work, if performed in the service of God, was to him as jojrful 
as any other. Nor did he in the intensity of his emotional 
temperament ignore the hygienic principles which were the 
bedrock of ancient Aryan religious teaching in India. As if 
to enforce the lesson that cleanliness is next to godliness, he 
himself with the most scrupulous care swept the roads and 
cleansed the temple at Puri, so that it was made " clean, cool, 
and pure, like his own mind." ^ But his bodily strength was 
worn out prematurely by the ardour of his religious zeal. 
He passed away in 1533, at the age of forty-seven, leaving his 
work to be carried on by the order of Vaishnava monks, or 
Goswamis, which he founded. 

^ Chaitdnya-chant-amnta, Sarkar's translation, p. 139. 



419 



CHAPTER XII 

bAbur 

IT was about seven years before Chaitanya's death that 
Babur won the great battle of Panipat which made him 
practically master of Hindustan. His engaging person- 
ality, artistic temperament, and romantic career make him 
one of the most attractive figures in the history of Islam. He 
had all the energy and determination of his savage ancestor, 
Timur, and at the same time was a much more chivalrous 
fighter. A vein of sincere religious feeling runs through his 
delightful autobiography, in marked contrast to the canting 
hypocrisy of Timur's memoirs. It would be an interesting 
biological and psychological study, if sufficient data could be 
obtained to trace the whole sequence of racial intermarriages 
in distinguished Turki and Mongol families, to show the effect 
of the Mendelian law in producing exceptionally fine types of 
humanity through the crossing of a wild and highly cultivated 
stock. Such an investigation might throw much light upon 
the laws of eugenics in their international relationship. The 
great spiritual and intellectual development which took place 
in comparatively few generations in men of Turki and Mongol 
race after their conversion to Islam was more due to the 
eugenic instinct which prompted them to prefer Iranian and 
Indo- Aryan wives to their own women-folk, and to the influence 
of the highly cultured peoples they conquered, than to the 
civilising effect of the religion they professed to follow. Neither 
Turks nor Mongols of pure blood contributed much to the 
spiritual growth of Islam. 

Babur's mother was a Mongol, a descendant of Chingliiz 
Khan, and he inherited many of the savage instincts of the 
untamed Tartar, as his name, ' The Tiger,* would seem to 
420 



BABUR 

suggest. His character was very typical of the individnaHstic 
tendencies of Islamic culture. Towards his friends and in all 
his personal relationships with his subjects he was generous, 
chivalrous, and open-hearted. He could enjoy to the full all 
the delights which good company and beautiful surroundings 
could offer. But his sympathy with friends and acquaintances 
and his communings with nature never went from the little 
circle of his objective perceptions into the great world beyond. 
He had no sympathy for humanity at large. He did not 
exult in bloodshed as his savage ancestors did, yet he felt no 
compunction in continuing the barbarous traditions of Tartar 
warfare as part of the business of the war-lord ; he notes down 
the wholesale butchery of prisoners in front of his royal pavilion 
and the building up of pyramids of human heads with the 
same faithfulness as he describes his joyful wine-parties, the 
delights of his pleasure-gardens, and his minute observations 
of topography and natural history. 

There is not the slightest sense of personal responsibility 
towards the millions of human beings committed to his charge 
in his graphic and careful descriptions of the climate, boundaries, 
population, and natural resources of Hindustan. He goes 
round his newly won empire like a landlord taking stock of the 
latest addition to his estate. At the same time he is perfectly 
frank and makes no pretensions. " The chief excellency of 
Hindustan," he says, " is that it is a large country and has 
abundance of gold and silver." He does not disguise his 
feelings of disappointment both with the land and its people. 
The country and towns were ugly ; its gardens had no walls. 
The people were not good fellows for a wine-party, they were 
unsociable and stupid ; they had no genius for mechanical 
invention ; knew nothing about architecture and pleasure- 
gardens ; they had " no good horses, no good flesh, no grapes 
or musk-melons, no good fruits, no ice or cold water, no good 
food or bread in their bazars, no baths or colleges,' no candles, 
no torches, not a candlestick." " In the rainy season you 
cannot shoot, even with the bow of our country, and it becomes 
quite useless." Babur grumbles wholeheartedly at the cursed 

421 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

country in which he was forced to hve, Hke the British subaltern 
fresh from Europe. 

The special circumstances of his early life no doubt helped 
to develop the finer side of Babur's character. He escaped 
the usual atmosphere of sycophancy, adulation, and self- 
indulgence which surrounded the court of a Turkish or Mogul 
autocrat by being left fatherless at the age of twelve, and 
compelled to hold his birthright only with the help of his own 
native wit and with the advice of a remarkably clever and 
courageous grandmother. For many years he was, in the 
words of Ferishta, " like a king on a chess-board, moved from 
place to place, and buffeted about like pebbles on the sea- 
shore." The thrilling adventures of his boyhood, described 
so vividly in his memoirs, gave him a taste for an active, open- 
air life. The resourcefulness, courage, and cheerfulness he 
showed in the desperate situations in which he was often placed 
won for him many devoted adherents, whose steadfast loyalty 
was of invaluable service in his dealings with his shifty " Mogul 
rascals " and difficult Afghan subjects. By education Babur 
was more Persian than Tartar, though he professed the Sunni 
instead of the Shiah doctrine to which the great majority of 
Persian Musalmans adhered. Like most Persians he was a 
great lover of flowers and of the grape-vine ; but his drinking 
bouts under the spreading plane-trees or in his garden pavilions, 
where he watched with delight the red and yellow arghwan 
bursting into flower, or the pomegranates hanging red upon 
the trees, were never vulgar debauches, but rather an irrepres- 
sible overflow of his bright, sunny nature. In the face of 
difficulty or danger he always kept his lower self under strict 
control. 

We left Babur in a previous chapter at Agra, after the battle 
of Panipat. But for his resolute character he would hardly 
have been permitted to enjoy the fruits of that great victory. 
His Afghan foes, though beaten, were by no means reconciled 
to the idea of Mogul rule. Many of their chieftains still held 
out in different provincial strongholds and refused to recog- 
nise Babur's authorit3^ One of those who had joined Babur 
422 



BABUR 

deserted with all his followers and raided the country round 
Agra, so that it was difficult for the Moguls to obtain forage 
and provisions. The Mogul troops and their horses were also 
suffering from the unaccustomed heat, and several of Babur's 
chief officers urged him to return to Kabul. Babur himself 
was by no means pleased with the first sight of his new kingdom. 
He had already been prospecting to find a site for " an elegant 
and regularly planned pleasure-ground," like those he had 
laid out at Kabul, with their water-courses, cypresses and 
flowering trees, beds of roses and narcissus, and the platform — 
' the Mount of Felicity ' — in the centre. But the ravages of 
continual invasions had made the country round Agra a desert, 
and he found it " so ugly and detestable " that he was " quite 
reptdsed and disgusted." 

Nothing, however, would persuade him to listen to the 
proposal of leaving India as Tim.ur had done, and giving up 
his hardly won kingdom. He told his officers that " a kingdom 
which had cost him so much pains in taking should not be 
wrested from him except by death," and issued a proclamation 
to his troops stating his determination to remain in India, 
and at the same time giving leave to those of his followers 
who preferred safet^^^ to glory to return to Kabul. He would 
only keep in his service soldiers whose valour would reflect 
honour upon themselves, their Padshah, and their country. 
" This order," says Ferishta, " had the desired effect : all 
murmurs ceased, and the officers, one and all, swore never to 
forsake him." Only one, Khwaja Kullan, whose reputation 
was already well established, accepted the permission to retire 
from the army on grounds of ill-health, and was appointed 
Governor of Kabul and Ghazni as a reward for his services. 

The proclamation also had the effect of bringing over to 
Babur's side several of Ibrahim lyodi's high officers, who being 
assured of Babur's intention to remain and rule as the Sultan 
of Delhi, hastened to place themselves on the winning side. 
Having thus secured his position for the time being, Babur 
decided to make Agra his capital instead of Delhi, which he 
found unsuitable for his water-gardens, baths, and airy pavilions, 

423 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

by which he sought to overcome what he called the " three 
inconveniences of Hindustan " — the heat, the strong winds, 
and the dust. There was, however, another adversary, more 
formidable than the Afghan, to dispose of. Babur had not 
been long settled at Agra before he received intelligence that 
the RanaSanga of Chitor, at the head of a confederation of 
Rajput chieftains — ^including Medni Rai, the Raja of Chanderi, 
who had played so conspicuous a part in the history of Malwa — 
was preparing to resist the Mogul invader, and, in order to 
secure the help of the Afghans, had put forward Mahmud, 
son of Sikandar I^odi, as the rightful heir to the throne of 
Delhi. Placing little confidence in the loyalty of the Indian 
chieftains who had joined him, Babur despatched them to 
maintain order in different parts of the provinces, and marched 
with his small but well-tried army, mostly of Mogul horse and 
artillery, to meet the enemy. Unfortunately his advance 
guard fell in with an Afghan force near Biana and was repulsed 
with considerable loss. This defeat caused consternation in 
the Mogul ranks, and was followed by the desertion of some 
of his men. To add to the trouble an astrologer in Babur's 
retinue had observed that the planet Mars was to be seen 
every evening in the west, and predicted that to march in 
that direction would mean certain defeat. 

Babur began to be troubled in his mind, and recalled an oft- 
expressed resolve to make peace with the Almighty b}^ giving 
up his intemperate habits. " Having sent for the gold and 
silver goblets and cups with all the other utensils used for 
drinking parties, I directed them to be broken, and renounced 
the use of wine, purifying my mind. The fragments of the 
goblets and other utensils of gold and silver I directed to be 
divided among darweshes and the poor." He also gave orders 
that no more wine should be sold in the camp. Then he called 
a council of war. Most of his ofiicers advised that the arm}- 
should retreat to the Panjab, after leaving a strong garrison 
at Agra. He listened attentively to their proposals and then 
put the question : " What will all the Muhammadan kings of 
the world say of a monarch whom the fear of death obliged to 
424 



BABUR 

abandon such a kingdom ? " It would be far better, he 
said, to face the prospect of martyrdom and fight to the last 
man. " For as it is certain that the soul must quit the body, 
it is fitting that it should do so with honour ; for the whole 
aim of a man's life should be that when he dies he should 
leave his name untarnished." Babur's appeal to the military 
conscience of his officers was again successful. With one 
voice they shouted approval of the Padshah's words, and each 
took an oath on the Quran that he would die in battle rather 
than turn his face from the enemy. 

In the great battle which ensued, near Fatehpur-Sikri, 
Babur adopted similar tactics to those he had used so success- 
fully at Panipat. His well-organised artillery played havoc 
in the Rajput ranks, and at the critical moment he led his 
body-guard in a desperate charge which broke their centre 
and won a decisive victory. Many of the Rajput chieftains, 
including several of their Musalman allies, fell on the field of 
battle, and the Rana, severely wounded, only escaped with great 
difficulty to one of his hill-fortresses in Malwa, where he died 
the same year. Babur proceeded to invest Chanderi, Medni 
Rai's ancestral stronghold. After a brave defence the garrison 
was reduced to the traditional forlorn hope, accompanied by 
its terrible sacrifice of women and children, in which the 
gallant Raja and several thousands of his retainers perished. 
These events took place in 1527. Two years afterwards Babur 
defeated the Afghans in Bengal near Buxar. 

He lived only a year after this final victory, his vigorous 
constitution having been undermined by repeated attacks of 
malarial fever. From the time when, as a boy of twelve, he 
came into his little kingdom of Ferghana he had reigned in 
all thirty-seven years, but as the Padshah or sovereign ruler 
of Hindustan he reigned less than five. His administration 
during this short period was characterised by the same energy, 
decision, and promptitude as he always displayed on the 
field of battle. He laid out his capital at Agra as a splendid 
garden-city, with palaces, baths, tanks, wells, and water- 
courses, planting the orchards and flower-gardens which he 

425 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

made " in every corner of Agra " with fruit-trees and rare 
plants collected from all parts of his empire, planting roses 
and narcissus regularly and " in beds corresponding to each 
other," and making the water in the irrigation channels gurgle 
over carved stone water-shoots, as if to remind him of his 
dearly loved mountain-streams in Ferghana. He restored the 
great trunk road which from the days of Chandragupta Maur>^a 
had connected the imperial capitals of Hindustan with the 
north-west frontier, building guard-houses and post-stations 
at regular intervals, and establishing an express letter mail 
between Agra and Kabul. He made a tour throughout his 
Indian dominions, taking stock of the inhabitants, the beasts, 
birds, fruit, and flowering trees ; sending at one time an 
oleander of rare colour, at another a fruit-tree which was new 
to him, to his gardens at Agra, ordering the reparation of 
mosques and other buildings, having the distances from his 
capital measured, and everywhere following the Indo-Aryan 
tradition of a personal as distinguished from a bureaucratic 
administration which eventually reconciled India to Mogul 
rule — ^for it appealed to that deep religious feeling of the 
Indian masses which makes a just and wise ruler God's vice- 
gerent on earth, a feeling which no bureaucratic machine, 
however perfect it may be, can ever evoke. 

The chronicles of the Mogul dynasty from the time of Babur 
down to Aurangzib's accession are entirely free from the narrow 
sectarian rancour which characterised so many of the previous 
Muhammadan rulers of India. There is no mention in Babur's 
memoirs of the destruction of Hindu temples or of the wholesale 
massacre of the ' infidels ' on account of their religion — ^though 
he often put prisoners to death in accordance with Mogul 
methods of * frightfulness ' in war. Babur, though no bigot, 
showed his sincere piety both in his life and in the manner 
of his death, which took place in the last da^^s of 1530, at the 
age of forty-nine. His eldest son, Humayun, to whom he was 
deeply attached, was seized with malarial fever while staying 
at his country estate at Sambhal. Babur had him brought to 
Agra by boat so that the court physicians might attend him, 
426 



BABUR 

but the latter pronounced the case hopeless. Babur himself 
was in ill-health at the time, and he was greatly agitated at 
the prospect of losing his dearly beloved son and heir. In his 
grief he turned to his courtiers for advice. One of them 
observed that in such circumstances the Almighty sometimes 
deigned to accept the thing most valued by one friend in 
exchange for the life of another. Babur at once clung to the 
idea, and declared that as of all things his own life was dearest 
to Humayun, so Humayun's life was dearest to him. He 
would offer his own life as a sacrifice to save his son. 

The courtiers urged that so great a sacrifice was uncalled 
for — the Padshah should give up instead the great Gwalior 
diamond taken at Agra, said to be the most valuable on earth. 
But Babur was too sincere to put faith in courtly compromises 
in his dealings with God. Just because his life was more 
precious than any diamond the sacrifice must be made. He 
began solemnly to walk round Humayun's couch, as if it were 
an altar, and then retired to his apartment to finish his devo- 
tions alone. Soon afterwards he was heard to exclaim : "I 
have borne it away ; I have borne it away ! " He was seized 
with an acute attack of the malaria to which he had been 
subject since he had lived in India, and as he grew worse 
Humayun revived. So the first of the Great Moguls gradually 
sank and passed away, commending his son to the protection 
of the comrades who had shared his struggles and his victories, 
and imploring Humayun with his dying breath to be as kind 
to his own brothers as his father had been to him, and avoid 
the fratricidal strife which had brought so many former 
dynasties to ruin. He was buried at Kabul, his former capital, 
in the pleasure-garden which, in accordance with Mongol 
custom, he had chosen for his own tomb — " the sweetest spot 
in the neighbourhood." 



427 



CHAPTER XIII 

HUMAYUN 

HUMAYUN was only twenty-two years of age when he 
began to reign, but he had had considerable experience 
both in war as one of Babur's principal lieutenants, 
and in civil administration under his father's guidance. He 
was, says Ferishta, " a prince as remarkable for his wit as for 
the urbanity of his manners ; and for the most part disposed 
to spend his time in social intercourse and pleasure. He 
devoted himself, however, to the sciences of astronomy and 
geography, and not only wrote dissertations on the nature of 
the elements, but had terrestrial and celestial globes constructed 
for his use." lyike Babur his education and tastes were entirely 
Persian, though he was far from being an orthodox Musalman — 
the creed of Islam was held lightly by most of Timtir's descen- 
dants. 

But while Timur and Babur were strong individualists and 
men of action, never allowing themselves to be turned from 
any set purpose, either by the preaching of a muUa or the 
prognostications of a soothsayer, Humayun was an amiable 
but weak dilettante who sought the advice of the court astro- 
logers in all affairs of State. His palace was designed accord- 
ing to astrological rules, with seven halls of audience dedicated 
to the sun, moon, and five planets, each hall being decorated 
with appropriate symbolic paintings. He gave audience and 
transacted business in one of these halls alternately throughout 
the week, according to the planet of the da3^ Even the court 
attendants wore on their uniforms an emblem corresponding 
to the dominant planetary influence, so that the Padshah 
might always be reminded of the occiilt power behind his 
own. 
428 



HUMAYUN 

In spite of these precautions the stars in their courses fought 
against Humayun. He fulfilled his father's dying injunctions 
to treat his brothers well by bestowing on them the governor- 
ship of different provinces ; but this did not prevent them 
from seizing the first opportunity for trying to push him off 
the throne. The individualistic principles of Islam, while 
they gave a stimulus to new creative effort by breaking up 
ancient civilisations, did not promote political stability, within 
or without the Muhammadan pale ; for every man who wielded 
the sword of Islam was tempted to test its strength and to 
use it for his own ends, regardless of family ties or social 
obligations. And for those who stood nearest to the throne 
the temptation was always strongest. Humayun had therefore 
to maintain his right of succession not only against his intriguing 
brothers, but against a distant relative, Muhammad Zaman 
Mirza, who first tried to get rid of him by assassination, 
and, having failed, fled to Gujerat, where he was aided by 
Bahadur Shah in raising a mixed army of Mogul, Afghan, and 
Rajput mercenaries. 

Another claimant to the throne of Delhi shortly afterwards 
appeared in the person of 'Ala-ud-din, the brother of the late 
Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, who also found Gujerat a convenient 
recruiting ground, and Bahadur Shah's treasury useful for 
supplying the sinews of war. 'Ala-ud-din was first in the field 
with an army of 40,000 men, which he sent under the command 
of his son, Tatar Khan, to attack Humayun at Agra ; but before 
it reached the neighbourhood of the city the greater part of it 
had deserted, and the imperial army, led by one of Babur's 
time-sendng brothers, fell upon the remainder and nearly 
annihilated it — Tatar Khan and three hundred of his officers 
being amongst the slain. 

Humayun had now to deal with Bahadur Shah himself, a 
more formidable adversary, for Gujerat was then one of the 
most powerful states of Northern India, its army being particu- 
larly strong in artillery. Apparently from a chivalrous feeling 
towards a fellow-Musalman, Humayun looked on while Bahadur 
Shah was engaged in battering down the defences of Chitor, 

429 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

but then marched against him. Bahadur Shah, imitating 
Babur's tactics at Panipat, entrenched himself strongly, 
expecting that Humayun would repeat Ibrahim Lodi's blunder 
by hurhng his army against his batteries. In this he under- 
estimated Humayun's military capacity, for instead of falling 
into the trap prepared for him the latter sent strong bodies 
of cavalry to scour the country in the rear of Bahadur's camp 
and cut off his supplies. In the course of two months the 
Gujerat army was reduced to a state of famine, and the Sultan 
after blowing up his guns left it to its fate and escaped by 
night with a few followers to the fortress of Mandu. Humayun 
after dispersing the remnants of the Gujerat forces proceeded 
to attack Mandu, and Bahadur Shah was eventually compelled 
to hide himself in the island of Diu, one of the remotest corners 
of his dominions, while the Mogul army overran the greater 
part of Gujerat and Malwa, which Bahadur Shah had conquered 
and annexed some years before. HumayHn, who was not 
lacking in personal courage, distinguished himself at the siege 
of ChamparJr by leading a party of three hundred men in 
scaling the walls of the fortress by night, with the help of 
steel spikes fixed in the scarp of the rock. He then forced 
his way sword in hand through the defenders' ranks and opened 
one of the gates for the entrance of his troops. 

So far all seemed to go well with the Mogul dynasty. But 
while he was prosecuting this successful campaign Humayun 
received news of a still more formidable rival threatening the 
security of his throne. This was Sher Khan Stir, an Afghan 
chieftain of great ability and strength of character, who had 
taken service under Babur, but only with a view to finding 
the auspicious moment for driving the detested Moguls out 
of India. Previous to entering the Mogul service he had 
taken a prominent part in the politics of Bihar, where the 
Afghans had established themselves for many generations, and 
where his family estate, or jagir, was situated. Family 
quarrels over the possession of the estate had thrown him 
alternately from the Afghan to the Mogul side. Babur had 
restored to him his jagir, of which he had been deprived by 

430 



HUMAYUN 

one of the Afghan rulers of Jaunpur ; but as soon as Mahmnd, 
one of Sikandar Lodi's sons who fought with the Rana Sanga 
against Babur, had obtained possession of Bihar after the 
disastrous battle near Agra, Sher Khan joined him. His great 
ambition would not permit Sher Klian to remain loyal to any 
master, Afghan or Mogul. He quarrelled with Mahmud, and, 
it is said, brought about his defeat by withdrawing his men 
in the battle which restored Babur's supremacy in Bihar. 

Early in the reign of Humayun, Sher Khan had played his 
game so well that though nominally owing allegiance to the 
Mogul Emperor he had obtained possession of the strong 
fortress of Chunar, near Benares, commanding the main 
entrance to the plains of Bengal through the Ganges valle}^ 
and was practically master of Bihar. Humayun made the 
mistake of allowing his scheming vassal to retain possession 
of this important stronghold, and Sher Khan, as soon as the 
Emperor was fully occupied in Gujerat, threw off the mask 
and proceeded with consummate strategy to develop his 
plans for driving the Mogul interlopers from Hindustan. He 
had the advantage of being Indian by birth, and thus was 
regarded by many Hindus as well as by Indian Muhammadans 
as their natural leader. Humayun, as soon as he realised 
Sher Khan's intentions, left Gujerat in charge of his brother 
Mirza Askari, and marched with a large army to attack Chunar, 
which Sher Khan left with a strong garrison while he himself 
was strengthening his position by the conquest of Bengal. 
The siege of Chunar, in which Humayun was assisted by a 
Turkish artillery officer, Rumi Khan, formerly in the service 
of the Sultan of Gujerat, lasted several months, but at last 
the Afghan garrison surrendered. In the meantime Sher 
Klian had sacked Gaur, and thus provided himself with means 
for the more arduous campaign against Humayun, but as he 
was not yet prepared to meet the imperial Mogul army he 
evacuated Gaur as soon as Chunar had fallen, and inveigled 
Humayun into a perilous advance into Bengal at the height 
of the monsoon floods by leaving the road open for him. 

Humayun fooHshly pushed on, but had no sooner taken 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

possession of Gaur than he found his communications cut off 
by floods. He was thus compelled to remain at Gaur for 
several months, during which time he lost many of his men 
by sickness and desertion, and his brother Mirza Hindal, 
whom he had left with part of the imperial army in Bihar, 
went off to Agra to work up a rebellion, hoping first to secure 
the throne for himself and then to finish off the Afghan. Sher 
Khan, while Humayun and his brother were thus occupied, 
had obtained possession of the fortress of Rohtas by a similar 
trick to that by which Nasir Khan had taken the stronghold 
of Asa Ahir several centuries before, and watching his oppor- 
tunity placed his small but well-organised forces between 
Humayun and Agra. He then retook Chunar and Benares, 
and feeling sure that Humayun could not now escape him 
laid siege to Jaunpur. When the state of the roads permitted, 
the remnants of the imperial army set out on its return march 
and Sher Khan commenced to stalk his quarry. Humayun was 
intercepted near Buxar, and both armies remained there 
watching each other for two months, the Moguls tr>dng to 
bridge the Ganges, and the Afghans waiting for an opportunity 
to attack, while Sher Khan tried to throw Huma^oin off his 
guard by making a pretence of negotiating. 

At last Sher Khan by a night march and skilful strategy 
seized all the river craft and surprised the Mogul camp, with 
the result that the greater part of the demoralised army was 
cut to pieces or drowned in the river. HumayHn bj' the 
persuasion of some of his officers was induced to leave the 
field when all was lost, and tried to cross the Ganges on horse- 
back ; but the exhausted animal was drowned, and the 
Emperor would certainly have shared the same fate had not 
a water-carrier in mid-stream helped him over on liis inflated 
goat's skin. Humayun's arrival at Agra after the disaster 
put an end for the time being to Mirza Hindal's schemes. His 
other brother, Mirza Kamran, came from Kabul "with reinforce- 
ments, and in face of the danger which threatened the Mogul 
dynasty the three cried truce and agreed to put their rivalries 
aside for a more convenient season. In the meantime Sher 



HUMAYUN 

Khan was taking advantage of his victory by consoHdating 
his position in Bengal and preparing for the decisive blow 
which would break completely the Mogul power in Hindustan, 
for as yet the imperial forces greatly outnumbered his own. 
He had everything to gain by suspending his stroke, for the 
Mogul court was a hot-bed of intrigues, and after a few months 
Mirza Kamran again quarrelled with his brother and went off 
to I^ahore with most of his retainers. About nine months 
after his victory at Buxar, Sher Khan, who had now adopted 
the title of Shah, with about 50,000 men advanced to Kanauj, 
while Humayun marched from Agra to meet him with an 
army of twice that number. Again the two armies faced 
each other for a considerable time, the Afghans having the 
advantage of position, and the Moguls losing heavily by 
desertions. Sher Shah waited until Humayun was forced by 
the breaking of the monsoon to move his camp, and then 
attacked. The Mogul army was so completely routed that 
the road to Agra lay open, and the Afghans were soon again 
in possession of the capital of Hindustan. 

The battle of Kanauj took place in 1540. Humayun fled 
from the field on an elephant and again narrowly escaped 
drowning while crossing the Ganges. His adventures for the 
next three years, until he found refuge at the court of the 
Shah of Persia, would form an excellent plot for an historical 
novel. After hurriedly collecting as much as possible of 
jewels and other valuables from the imperial treasury at Agra, 
he fled to I^ahore, accompanied by his brothers, Hindal and 
Askari, hoping to get assistance from Kamran. But the latter, 
as soon as he realised the situation, opened negotiations with 
Sher Shah, who allowed him to remain unmolested at Kabul 
in return for the cession of the Panjab. Mirza Hindal retired 
to Kandahar, so Humayun, who had been joined by some of 
the Mogul officers who had escaped from Kanauj, was left to 
his own resources. The cheerful spirit which was his best 
characteristic did not, however, desert him. At a musical 
party given at Mirza Hindal' s house he fell deeply in love with 
a beautiful young Persian girl, named Hamida, and married 

2E 433 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

her in spite of his brother's remonstrances. He also succeeded 
in collecting a small army, and accompanied by his bride, 
Banu Begam, as she was called, he marched southward into 
Sind, hoping to get assistance from the Muhammadan governor 
of that province in recovering possession of Gujerat. In this 
he was disappointed, for after a year and a half of unsuccessful 
campaigning and fruitless negotiations his Mogul troops had 
nearly all deserted and he was constrained to apply for protec- 
tion to the most powerful Rajput ruler in that neighbourhood, 
the Maharaja Maldeo of Marwar, 

After terrible sufferings in the desert he succeeded in forcing 
his way to the vicinity of Jodhpur, only to find that there was 
nothing to be hoped for in that quarter, for Maldeo was 
preparing to seize him and hand him over to Sher Shah. So 
with the few followers who still remained faithful to him 
Humayun turned to fly towards Amarkot, a fortress on the 
outskirts of the Sind desert, where he hoped for a better 
reception from another Rajput prince, the Rana Prasad. 
Pressing on by night through the waterless desert with Maldeo's 
troopers in pursuit, Humayun and the young Begam, who had 
shared all his misfortunes, were in a pitiful plight. Many of 
his retinue died of thirst or went mad. After some days they 
were overtaken and surrounded by a body of Rajput horse 
under the command of the Crown Prince of Marwar, who, 
however, contented himself with upbraiding Humayun for 
violating Hindu territory and Hindu laws, and then supplied 
him with water and allowed him to continue his march. In ij 
spite of this unexpected help from the enemy the Moguls 
suffered great privations before they reached Amarkot. For 
three days they were without water, and when at last they 
came to one of the deep wells of the desert country several of j 
the party, maddened by thirst, threw themselves into it in 
their eagerness to reach the first skinful as it was drawn to J 
the surface. The next day they reached a small stream which i 
showed that they were approaching the edge of the desert, j 
In spite of the loss of several camels, which died from over-| 
drinking, HumayGn and the Begam with the miserable rem- 

434 



HUMAYUN 

nant of their retinue at last straggled into Amarkot. Their 
hopes of assistance from the Rana were not disappointed. 
He not only showed them the kindest hospitality, but offered 
Humayun the assistance of his armed forces in another attempt 
to obtain possession of Sind. It was in this haven of refuge, 
under the protection of a Hindu raja, that Banu Begam gave 
birth to a son, Prince Akbar, known to posterity as the greatest 
of the Great Moguls. Humayun, accompanied by the Rana 
and his army, had already started on his second expedition 
to Sind when he received the news. He indented on the 
saddle-bags of his retinue — ^which now did duty for the imperial 
Mogul treasury — ^for the customary presents to his friends, 
and found only a bag of musk. This was brought on a china 
plate and distributed among them with the pious wish that 
his son's fame might be spread abroad throughout the world 
like the fragrance of that perfume. 

At the beginning all went well with the expedition. The 
Rana was joined by several other Rajput chieftains, and a 
few Mogul troopers rallied to Humayun's standard, so that 
the whole force mustered 15,000 cavalry. But Humayun's 
tactless conduct and disregard of Hindu susceptibilities offended 
his Rajput friends, and before the army came into touch with 
the Muhammadan forces in Sind the Rana had withdrawn his 
troops in disgust and returned to Amarkot. Humayun was 
now left to settle matters with Husain Arghun, the ruler of 
Sind. After some fighting an arrangement was made by which 
Humayun was allowed to retire unmolested on condition that 
he went to Kandahar, where his brother Mirza Askari was 
governor on behalf of Kamran. At this juncture he found 
an invaluable recruit in Bairam Khan, a Turkoman noble — 

; one of Babur's generals and a most capable officer — who after 
the disaster of Kanauj had escaped to Gujerat, and now suc- 

, ceeded in rejoining his sovereign. He remained by Humayun's 
side throughout all his subsequent difficulties and dangers, and 
did much to restore the fortunes of the Mogul dynasty. 

Humayiin's brothers, on the other hand, proved to be as 
treacherous as ever. Before he reached Kandahar he was 

435 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

warned by a friendly messenger from the city that the Mirza, 
at the instigation of Husain Arghun, was on his way to seize 
him and hold him as a prisoner so that he and Kamran might 
be in a position to bargain with Sher Shah. Humayun, accom- 
panied by the Begam and Bairam Khan, had hardly time to 
mount and gallop away, leaving the infant prince to his uncle's 
compassion, before the Mirza and his troopers dashed into the 
camp. Askari, failing in his main object, carried ofE his 
nephew to Kandahar, and Humayun, with only forty-two 
followers, succeeded in reaching the Persian province of Seistan, 
where he was received with all honour by the governor on 
behalf of the Shah Tahmasp and supplied with every requisite 
for a dignified appearance at the Persian court. HumayHn 
was not at the end of his troubles, but he was safe from his 
crafty enemy, Sher Shah, and from the machinations of his 
nearest relatives. 



436 



CHAPTER XIV 

SHER SHAH'S REIGN AND THE RESTORA- 
TION OF THE MOGUL DYNASTY 

DURING the three years which had elapsed since his 
great victory over the Moguls at Kanauj in 1540 
Sher Shah had been fully occupied in extending his 
conquests and in restoring order in his new dominions. In 
this task he proved his high qualities both as a military leader 
and as an administrator. The former Mogul provinces had 
relapsed into a state of complete anarchy. The roads were 
insecure for mercantile traffic, and the cultivators upon whose 
industry the revenues of the State depended were at the 
mercy of the disbanded Mogul soldiery and of other marauders. 
Sher Shah was a rigid disciplinarian : he punished with equal 
severity his own Afghan soldiers and Mogul or other outlaws 
when caught plundering the villagers. He showed no mercy 
either to zamindars or ryots when they failed to pay the 
governmental dues. 

Born in India, he had acquired an intimate knowledge of 
village life and a practical experience of administrative work 
while he was in charge of his father's estates at Sahseram, 
and as an astute estate manager had realised that the interests 
of the landlord were bound up with the well-being of his 
tenants. He was a well-read man, and following the tradi- 
tions of previous Afghan rulers in Bengal had doubtless made 
himself acquainted with the principles of Hindu as well as 
Muhammadan polity. He was, however, far from being the 
vicegerent of Vishnu, the Preserver, after the Hindu ideal of 
government, though his Muhammadan biographer extols the 
justice of his dealings with the ryots and asserts that before 
his time the settlement of land revenue was left to the caprice 

437 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

of Government officials. Like many modern writers, Abbas 
Khan, the author of the Tdnkh-i Sher Shdhi,'^ assumes that 
Indian history began with the Muhammadan conquest. Sher 
Shah was a strict Sunni who dealt with Hindu ryots in the 
same spirit as a prudent farmer treats his horses and cattle — 
they were to be protected from injury and maltreatment so 
that they might contribute the more to their owner's strength 
and wealth ; for Sher Shah acted entirely on the principle 
L'Etat, c'est moi. 

His government was a military despotism and his administra- 
tive methods thorough in the modern Prussian sense. The 
whole country was effectively garrisoned so that no one dared 
to dispute his authority or disturb the regular collection of 
the imperial revenue. Of the people of Kanauj it is said by 
his biographer, " no man kept in his house a sword, an arrow, 
a bow, or a gun, nay, any iron article whatever except the imple- 
ments of husbandry and cooking utensils ; and if he [the 
Governor] ordered the headmen of any village to attend him, 
they obeyed his order, and dared not for one moment to absent 
themselves. The fear and dread of him was so thoroughly 
instilled into the turbulent people of those parts that accord- 
ing to the measurement they paid their revenue to the 
treasurers." ^ He was as severe with the zamindars, the 
fiscal agents of Muhammadan India, as he was with the rj^ots. 
When the headmen and cultivators of the province of Sambhal 
fled from the oppression of the Musalman officials he sent 
Masnad Ali Isa Khan, " a lion in valour and gallantry," 
with orders to enlist five thousand new cavalry for restoring 
order in the province. The new governor " so humbled and 
overcame by the sword the contumacious zamindars of those 
parts that they did not rebel even when he ordered them 
to cut down their jungles, which they had cherished like 
children, but cut them with their own hands, though draw- 
ing deep sighs of affliction ; and they reformed and repented 
them of their thieving and highway robberies, and they paid 

1 Translated in vol. iv of Elliot's History oj India. 

2 Ibid., p. 416. 



SHER SHAH'S REIGN 

in at the city their revenue according to the measurements." ^ 
So Sher Shah, it is said, had no more anxiety regarding the 
province of Sambhal. 

Sher Shah's system of revenue-collection is described by 
the same writer as follows : " There was appointed in every 
pargana one armr, one God-fearing shikkddr, one treasurer, 
one kdrkun to write Hindi and one to write Persian ; and he 
ordered his governors to measure the land every harvest, to 
collect the revenue according to the measurement, and in 
proportion to the produce, giving one share to the cultivator, 
and half a share to the mukaddam [headman] ; and fixing the 
assessment with regard to the kind of grain, in order that 
the mukaddams and chaudhans and ' dmils should not oppress 
the cultivators, who are the support of the prosperity of the 
kingdom. Before his time it was not the custom to measure 
the land, but there was a kdnungo in every pargana, from whom 
was ascertained the present, past, and probable future state 
of the pargana. In every sarkdr he appointed a chief shikkddr 
and a chief munsif, that they might watch the conduct both 
of the ' dmils and the people ; that the ' dmils should not oppress 
or injure the people, or embezzle the King's revenue ; and if 
any quarrel arose among the King's 'dmils regarding the boun- 
daries of the parganas, they were to settle it, that no con- 
fusion might find its way amongst the King's affairs." How 
little the prosperity and happiness of his Hindu subjects 
counted in Sher Shah's land poHcy may be judged from the 
next sentence. " If the people, from any lawlessness or 
rebellious spirit, created a disturbance regarding the collection 
of the revenue, they were so to eradicate and destroy them 
with punishment and chastisement that their wickedness and 
rebellion should not spread to others." ^ 

Sher Shah was, however, scrupulously careful to protect 
the crops of industrious ryots from unnecessary injury. When 
on the march he stationed guards to prevent any of his soldiery 
trespassing on cultivated ground, and if any man disobeyed 

^ Tdrikh-i Sher Shdht, EUiot, vol. iv, pp. 415-416. 
2 Ibid., pp. 413-414. 

439 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

orders by plucking the corn he would himself cut off the ears 
of the offender and have him paraded through the camp with 
the corn hung round his neck. Neither would he allow the 
r3^ots to be plundered or carried off as slaves when he entered 
an enemy's country, for, said he, " the cultivators are blame- 
less, they submit to those in power ; and if I oppress them 
they will abandon their villages, and the country will be 
ruined and deserted, and it will be a long time before it again 
becomes prosperous." ^ He was also generous in rewarding 
the faithful service of his officials, especially his own countrj^- 
men. His reflections on this subject are characteristic of 
his administrative principles. " I have examined," he said, 
" and accurately ascertained that there is no such income and 
advantage in other employments as in the government of a 
district. Therefore I send my good old loyal experienced 
servants to take charge of districts, that the salaries, profits, 
and advantages may accrue to them in preference to others ; 
and after two years I change them, and send other servants 
like to them, that they also may prosper, and that under my 
rule all my old servants may enjoy these profits and advan- 
tages, and that the gate of comfort and ease may be opened 
to them." 2 And to every pious fellow-countryman who came 
to the imperial court Sher Shah gave presents " exceeding 
his expectations," and he would say : " This is your share 
of the kingdom of Hind which has fallen into my hands ; this 
is assigned to you, come every year to receive it." Nor did 
he forget the men of his own clan — the tribe and family of 
Sur who dwelt in the land of Sur. He sent them an annual 
stipend, and during his reign " no Afghan whether in Hind 
or in Roh was in want, but all became men of substance." 
No M^onder his pious biographer invokes blessings on his 
head ! 

At the same time Sher Shah was impartial in exacting from 
all his subjects implicit obedience to his orders. No one dared 
to dispute his authority, or act in opposition to his administra- 

^ Tdrikh-i Sher Shdhl, Elliot, vol. iv, p. 422. 
2 Ibid., p. 414. 
440 



SHER SHAH'S REIGN 

tive measures. " If a son of his own, or a brother, or any of 
his relatives or kin, or any chief or minister, did a thing dis- 
pleasing to Sher Shah, and it got to his knowledge, he would 
order him to be bound and put to death." ^ Sher Shah was 
a good estate manager. Following the ancient Hindu tradi- 
tions, he paid special attention to the upkeep of roads and to 
the security and comfort of passengers on the king's highway. 
He built many serais, with fruit gardens and separate provision 
for Hindus and Musalmans. Many of the roads were planted 
with avenues of fruit and shade-giving trees. In every serai 
two horses were kept to provide a regular postal service, so 
that every day news might be conveyed to the imperial court 
from the most distant parts of Hindustan. The headmen of 
villages were made personally responsible for the detection 
of cases of highway robbery. If they failed to point out the 
thieves they were compelled to make good the traveller's 
loss ; " for," so the wise chronicler of the times reflects, " it 
has been generally ascertained that theft and highway rob- 
beries can only take place by the connivance of these headmen. 
. . . Mukaddams and cultivators are alike thieves, and they 
bear to each other the intimate relations of kinsmen ; hence 
either the mukaddams are implicated in thefts and highway 
robberies, or can ascertain who perpetrated them." ^ In cases 
of murder, when the perpetrators were not discovered Sher 
Shah's methods were equally thorough. The headman of the 
village within whose limits the murder had occurred was 
arrested and kept in prison until he disclosed the whereabouts 
of the criminals — in default he was to be put to death. 

Sher Shah showed brilliant capacity as an organiser, both 
in military and civil affairs. By dint of indefatigable industry 
and personal attention to the smallest details of administration 
he restored law and order throughout Hindustan in the short 
space of five years. And no doubt the long-suffering, law- 
abiding ryot was grateful to the iron-handed Afghan for an 
interval of comparative peace, and for protection against 
indiscriminate plunder, though he might sometimes sigh for 
^ Tdrtkh-i Sher ShdM, Elliot, vol, iv, p. 428. * Ibid., p. 420. 

441 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the golden days when even Sfldras were Aryan freemen, and 
the laws of the village Assemblies were respected even by the 
King of Kings and Supreme Ivord of the Five Indies. 

While he was thus putting his house in order Sher Shah 
was also energetically organising his military forces and 
conducting several campaigns. He established fortified posts 
in many parts of his dominions where danger threatened from 
invasion, or where he wished to overawe an unfriendly popula- 
tion. The principal of these was the great fortress of Rohtas, 
on the Jhilam river, named after the stronghold in Bihar, and 
designed to strengthen his hold upon the Panjab. After 
frustrating the attempts of Humayun to retrieve the disaster 
of Kanauj, Sher Shah was obhged to display his military 
strength in Bengal in order to suppress an ambitious viceroy 
who, following his own example, aspired to be an independent 
ruler. When his recalcitrant subject had been put in chains, 
he partitioned Bengal into a number of provinces and dis- 
tributed the command of them among chieftains of different 
clans whose mutual jealousies were a guarantee against similar 
attempts. 

Two years after his accession Sher Shah added Malwa to 
his dominions. In 1542 he laid siege to Raisin, a Rajput 
stronghold which surrendered after a siege of six months, 
when the walls had been battered and breached in many 
places by his artillery. The Rajputs, trusting to his solemn 
promise that their lives would be spared, came out of the 
fortress, but while they were encamped in the neighbour- 
hood Sher Shah repented of his promise and gave orders for 
a wholesale massacre. The Raja Puran Mall, when he was 
told that the Afghans had surrounded his camp, first killed 
his beloved wife, Ratnavali — " who sang Hindi melodies very 
sweetly " — and then called upon his retainers to sacrifice 
their own wives and families. " While the Hindus," sa5^s 
the Musalman historian, " were employed in putting their 
women and families to death, the Afghans on all sides 
commenced the slaughter of the Hindus. Puran Mall 
and his companions, like hogs at bay, failed not to exhibit 
442 



SHER SHAH'S REIGN 

valour and gallantry, but in the twinkling of an eye all were 
slain." 1 

Such of their wives and families as were not slain were 
taken prisoners. One daughter of Puran Mall and three sons 
of his elder brother were taken alive ; the rest were all killed. 
Sher Shah gave the daughter of the Raja to some itinerant 
minstrels, " that they might make her dance in the bazars." 
The boys were castrated, " so that the race of the oppressor 
might not increase." 

The excuse given for Sher Shah's treachery and fiendish 
cruelty on this occasion was that some Muhammadan widows 
had complained of the Raja's conduct, and that the 
'Ulamas, when consulted in the matter, had decided that the 
sovereign's promises and oaths under these circumstances were 
not binding. 

After this exploit Sher Shah's mind was " quite at ease 
concerning the kingdom of Hind." But, persuaded by his 
Sunni nobles and chieftains, who urged that he should not 
sheathe the sword until Islam in India was purged of the 
Shiah heresy, he determined to strike at the root of the evil 
by breaking the power of the Hindu, then represented by the 
Maharaja of Marwar, Maldeo. So in 1543 he collected all 
the forces of his empire, and invaded the latter's territory. 
Many of the Rajput chiefs rallied to the Maharaja's standard, 
and Sher Shah made little progress until by means of forged 
letters dropped by his spies in the Rajput camp he managed 
to arouse the Maharaja's suspicions regarding the loyalty of 
some of his chieftains. Two of the latter, named Jaya Chandel 
and Goha, in order to wipe off the imputation upon their 
honour withdrew their retainers, numbering about 12,000 men, 
and rashly attacked the whole imperial army, which out- 
numbered them by more than six to one. For once Sher Shah's 
cunning calculations were entirely upset. The Afghan camp 
was quite unprepared for the sudden onslaught of the Rajput 
cavalry and was at first thrown into confusion. When at 
last the Afghans rallied and the Rajputs were forced to retire, 
1 Tdrikh-i Sher ShdM, EUiot, vol. iv, p. 403. 

443 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

even Slier Shah acknowledged the courage of the infidel, and, 
alluding to the barrenness of the soil of Marwar, declared that 
he " had nearly given the kingdom of Delhi for a handful of 
millet." 

Soon after this the Maharaja was compelled to retire to the 
fortress of Siwana, on the borders of Gujerat, and Sher Shah 
took possession of Chitor. In 1545 the imperial army laid 
siege to Kalanjar, which was stoutly defended by the Raja 
Kirat Singh. In consequence of Sher Shah's treachery at 
Raisin, the Rajputs refused to come to terms. While Sher 
Shah was directing his batteries, which had been placed upon 
high earthworks, so as to command the interior of the fortress, 
an enemy shell exploded a magazine close to where the 
Emperor was standing. Sher Shah was carried to his tent 
mortally wounded, but continued to give orders to his officers 
for the final assault by which the fortress was won. The 
brave defenders were put to the sword, except the Raja, who 
with a few of his retainers fought his way through, but was 
taken prisoner the next day and put to death to celebrate the 
accession of the new ruler of Hindustan. Sher Shah died 
giving thanks to God for the victory. He was buried at 
Sahseram, on his family estate, in a stately mausoleum, one 
of the finest monuments of the Muhammadan period in India, 
which in its stern grandeur is eloquent of one of the strcug 
men of Islam, a typical Musalman war-lord. 

These great royal tombs, the Muhammadan counterpart 
of the Indo- Aryan stupa, all bear the stamp of the men whose 
fame they celebrate. They were built in one of the pleasure- 
gardens where their royal owners passed their hours of recrea- 
tion, a terrestrial paradise which death consecrated as hoh^ 
ground. And though forbidden by his creed to make for 
himself a graven image the Musalman monarch took so much 
interest in the planning of his last resting-place that uncon- 
sciously he gave it the impress of his own character, and the 
builders formed it after his own image with as much care as 
the court painters drew his portrait. Thus the mausoleum 
together with the personal memoirs, the chronicles of the 
444 



SHER SHAH'S REIGN 

court historian, and the portraits of the court miniature painter 
help to provide material for the study of the cult of indi- 
vidualism which made Muhammadan history. But from the 
artistic standpoint the Indo-Muhammadan tomb belongs to 
Indian tradition as much as the stupa, the royal tomb of the 
Aryan kings. Its symbolism is precisely the same as that of 
the stupa, and the monuments of Indo-Aryan and Indo- 
Muhammadan kings were both the creations of the royal 
craftsmen of India. 

If Sher Shah had transmitted his own strength of character 
to his grandchildren Humayun would hardly have found the 
opportunity for recovering his lost kingdom, and the history 
of the Mogul dynasty in India would have ended with the 
battle of Kanauj in 1540. But the Muhammadan cult of 
individualism was absolutely inconsistent with the hereditary 
principle of monarchy, and the efforts of Musalman monarchs 
to reconcile their personal and dynastic interests with the 
political ideals of Islam only led to chronic unrest and in- 
variably ended in dismal failure. Sher Shah had appointed 
his eldest son, 'Adil Khan, as his heir, but he was a weakling 
and was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother, Jalal Khan. 
Muhammadan politicians never recognised any dynastic rights 
unless they were maintained by force of arms. When one of 
Sher Shah's generals urged the claims of 'Adil Khan as the 
rightful heir he was answered by the other grandees : " What 
advice is this ? No one obtains a kingdom by inheritance ; 
it belongs to whoever can gain it by the sword." ^ 

Jalal Khan, who assumed the name of Salim Shah, inherited 
some of Sher Shah's capacity, and after some disturbances 
caused by 'Adil Khan's faction seated himself firmly on his 
father's throne by the usual method of exterminating many 
of his nearest relatives and those of the nobles whom he dis- 
trusted. During his reign, which lasted eight years, Humayun 
remained under the protection of the Persian court and did 
not venture to cross swords with the Afghan ' usurpers,' as 
the Mogul chroniclers chose to regard the representatives of 

^ Tdrikh-i Dandt, Elliot, vol. iv, p. 487. 

445 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the line of Stir. So Salim Shah's reign was for the most part 
free from serious pohtical commotion, except for some disturb- 
ances caused by a Muslim revivalist named Shaikh 'Alai, who 
preached a form of socialism based upon the Quran and posed 
as the expected Mahdi who at the close of the Muhammadan 
millennium was to appear as the herald of the Day of Judgment. 
He gained many converts by his eloquence, and his enthusiastic 
followers took upon themselves to turn the sword of Islam 
against all who contravened their chosen s^^stem of social 
ethics. The court mullas, however, did not accept this pro- 
ceeding as good Muhammadan logic, and were shocked at the 
Shaikh's lack of respect for royalty, so they condemned him 
to death as a heretic. Salim Shah was magnanimous enough 
to commute the sentence to banishment to a remote part of 
his dominions. The Shaikh nevertheless persisted in his 
seditious propaganda, and at last died when the punishment 
of the lash was being inflicted upon him. His followers 
gradually dispersed, so this interesting socialistic experiment, 
like many others, ended in failure. The Mahdawi movement, 
however, continued to agitate the mind of Islam for a long 
time afterwards. 

Salim Shah died in 1553, and was followed by his brother- 
in-law, Muhammad Khan, who murdered Salim's eldest son, 
a boy of twelve, and thus cleared the way for his own succession 
to the throne. Under the title of Muhammad 'Adil Shah, or 
'Adili Shah, he soon won for himself the nickname of Andli — 
' the Fool ' — for he immediately began to dissipate the resources 
of his treasury in senseless prodigality, and in a very short 
time the whole of the political machinery so carefully built 
up by Sher Shah, upon which his own power and prosperity 
depended, was completely disorganised. The Delhi Empire 
soon ceased to exist : it was again split up into five separate 
kingdoms at war with each other. Hemu, a Hindu shop- 
keeper who had pushed his way to the front as 'Adil Shah's 
commander-in-chief, was the strongest and most capable of 
the competitors for power, but the prospect of a revival of 
Hindu supremacy was naturally distasteful to most Muham- 
446 







Tomb of Sher Shah at Sahseram 




30. 



Tomb op Humayun ax Dei,hi 



446 



HUMAYUN'S RETURN 

madans ; so while the different Afghan factions were contend- 
ing with each other messengers were sent from Delhi and 
Agra inviting the exiled Mogul monarch in Persia to return 
and take possession of his throne. 

Though Humayun's life as a political refugee at the Persian 
court had been far from pleasant, when he received the message 
he was in a dejected state of mind and hardly disposed to 
undertake new adventures. Shah Tahmasp, who was an 
enthusiastic propagandist of Sufi doctrines, had accorded him 
ceremonial honour and lavish hospitality, but had lost no 
opportunity of reminding Humayun of his dependent position, 
and had exacted the most humiliating terms as the price of 
his assistance in recovering his throne. Though Humaytin 
had been brought up as a Sunni he had been compelled by the 
Shah to sign a profession of the Shiah faith and to promise 
to propagate its doctrines in India and to give territorial 
compensation to Persia. With the aid of Persian troops he 
had taken Kabul and Kandahar from his brother Kamran, 
and had recovered possession of his son, Prince Akbar. But 
his hold upon the Afghans was most precarious. Repeated 
acts of treachery had at last driven him to put out Kamran's 
eyes. Mirza Hindal had been killed while fighting on Huma- 
yun's side. He had been reconciled again to Mirza Askari, 
but immediately after a great feast held to celebrate the 
event Humayun had thrown him into prison. He even dis- 
trusted his staunchest adherent and right-hand man, Bairam 
Klhan, who had stood loyally by his side during all the 
time of his exile from India and by his tact and diplomacy 
had smoothed the way in the difficult negotiations with the 
Shah. 

In this mood Humayun fell back upon an old method of 
divination to settle his fate. He sent three horsemen out in 
different directions to take the names of the first three persons 
they might meet. The first returned and reported that he 
had met a traveller whose name was Daulat (' empire ') ; the 
second declared that his man called himself Murad (' the object 
of desire ') ; the third that he had met a villager whose name 

447 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

was Saadiit (' good luck ').i Humayun's spirits revived at this 
most auspicious augury. Though he had only 15,000 horse 
under his command, he set out from Kabul at the beginning 
of 1555 to recover possession of the Panjab. At Peshawar 
he was joined by Bairam Khan with a body of Mogul veterans, 
and by the old general's skilful strategy HumayHn defeated 
the Afghan forces which opposed his advance, occupied Lahore, 
and re-entered Delhi in triumph fifteen years after his defeat 
at Kanauj. 

The Afghan dynasty was overthrown, but Humayun did 
not live to recover all his former dominions. Six months 
afterwards he died from the effects of falling down a staircase 
in his palace at Delhi. Humayun was a wine-bibber, like 
Babur, and indulged in opium. It is not improbable that the 
accident was primarily due to this cause, though Ferishta 
gives it a pious touch. Humayun, he says, was descending 
the stairs when the muazzin, or crier of the royal chapel, 
announced the hour of prayer. The Padshah, according to 
custom, stood still, and having repeated the creed sat down 
on the second step until the crier had finished. As he rose 
and tried to support himself on the staff he held in his hand 
it slipped on the polished steps and he fell headlong over the 
parapet. He was taken up unconscious, and though he soon 
recovered his senses the injuries he had received proved fatal 
four days afterwards. 

Humayun died at the beginning of 1556, in the forty-ninth 
year of his age. Including the years of exile, he had reigned 
twenty-five years. His shallowness and defects of character 
were covered by the saving grace of cheerfulness. Like most 
of the Great Moguls, he was for his intimate friends a prince 
of good fellows. He was never wanting in personal courage, 
but the restoration of the Mogul dynasty was more due to the 
steadfast loyalty of his comrades and to the weakness of 
Sher Shah's descendants than to his own military capacity. 
The contrast between Sher Shah and HumayHn could not be 
better illustrated than it is in the two great monuments which 

^ Ferishta, Btiggs' translation, vol. ii, pp. 172-173. 
448 



I 



HUMAYUN'S DEATH 

perpetuate their memory. Humayun's mausoleum at Delhi 
portrays in its polished elegance the facile charmeur and rather 
superficial dilettante of the Persian school, whose best title 
to fame is that he was the father of Akbar ; Sher Shah's at 
Sahseram the stern, strong man, egotist and empire-builder, 
who trampled all his enemies underfoot and ruled Hindustan 
with a rod of iron. 



2F 449 



CHAPTER XV 

AKBAR : THE PROTECTORATE OF 
BAIRAM KHAN 

AT the time of Humayun's death Bairam Khan was 
occupied in completing the conquest of the Panjab 
on behalf of his sovereign, who was represented by 
the young Prince Akbar, then only thirteen years old. If 
he had so willed it the Khan could have found plenty of prece- 
dents, reckoned sound by Muhammadan opinion of the time, 
for using the opportunity to get rid of his youthful commander- 
in-chief and for making a bid for supreme power for himself. 
It says much for the loyalty of his character that he was proof 
against the temptation, and immediately joined with the other 
officers in proclaiming Akbar as Padshah of Hindustan, though 
he himself, by Akbar's wish, retained the position given him 
by Huma3^un as the Prince's guardian, and during Akbar's 
minority exercised full power of sovereignty under the title of 
Khan Baba, or Protector. 

Akbar had been reared in the camp from the day of his 
birth. At five years of age, when Humaytin was besieging Kabul, 
he had been exposed to the shot from his father's cannon by 
his vindictive uncle Kamran. His playfellows had been the 
tough old campaigners to whom warfare was the breath of 
life, and by the time he had entered his teens he was an expert 
in the management of elephants, horses, and camels, and skilled 
in the use of arms. Nevertheless it was well for the Mogul 
dynasty that he had such a powerful supporter by his side 
in this critical time, for Humayun had by no means disposed 
of all his adversaries before he died. Hindustan was not only 
distracted by the struggles of the numerous competitors for 
the throne of Delhi. Soon after Akbar's accession a great 
450 



AKBAR: THE PROTECTORATE 

famine occurred, followed by an epidemic of plague which 
devastated most of the cities of Northern India. The news of 
Humayun's death had inspired the Governor of Kabul to 
revolt, and Hemu, 'Adili Shah's commander-in-chief, now prac- 
tically master in Bengal, was still in the field and already 
advancing from Chunar towards Agra with an army of thirty 
thousand men, gathering strength on his march from the 
numerous enemies of the Mogul cause. Hemu, as a Hindu, 
was popular|with the Indian masses, and none of the predatory 
racesrsettled|in India liked the appearance of more competitors 
in the field they regarded as their own. 

Before Bairam could come to the rescue Agra had fallen. 
HemG energetically followed up this first success by laying 
siege to Delhi, where the main body of the Mogul army was 
concentrated. The Governor, Tardi Beg Khan, without waiting 
for reinforcements, sallied out to attack the enemy, but was 
defeated and fled to Sirkind. The city surrendered, and Hemu, 
assuming the title of Vikramaditya, was proclaimed sovereign 
ruler of Hindustan. In spite of his position as the avowed 
champion of Hinduism Hemu had secured the alliance of a 
number of Afghan chieftains, and with an army now augmented 
to over one hundred thousand men was preparing to push on 
to Lahore with the intention of annihilating Bairam's forces 
and the last hope of the Mogul dynasty. The Moguls, including 
the remnants of the garrison of Agra and Delhi, did not muster 
many more than twenty thousand men, and almost all of 
Akbar's officers, alarmed at the reports of Hemu's triumphant 
progress, were in favour of a retreat to Kabul. But Bairam 
Khan, supported by Akbar, resolutely opposed such a feeble 
step, which would have been fatal to the prospects of the house 
of Timur. Pour encourager les autres he gave orders for the 
arrest and summary execution of the late Governor of Delhi, 
Tardi Beg, on a charge of misconduct in the face of the enemy, 
and then marched out rapidly to meet Hemu. Fortune favoured 
the resolute Turkish general, for a large body of cavalry which 
he sent out to reconnoitre surprised an Afghan force in charge 
of Hemu's artillery and captured the whole of it. This was 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

disastrous for the Hindu cause. The two main forces met 
on the historic field of Panipat. Hemu endeavoured to make 
up for the loss of his guns by a furious charge of elephants, 
and almost broke the Mogul centre, but in the crisis of the 
battle he was shot in the eye by an arrow and fell back in his 
howdah insensible. His body-guard began to waver at the 
sight of his fall, and before he recovered his army was routed 
by a charge of the Mogul cavalry. Hemu himself was taken 
prisoner and brought to Akbar's tent in a pitiable plight, 
Bairam Khan was anxious that his royal protege should win 
for himself the title of Ghazi, or ' Champion of the Faith,' by 
slaying the infidel on the spot, but the more chivalrous Akbar 
had scruples against killing a wounded prisoner and merely 
touched Hemu's head with his sword, whereupon Bairam drew 
his own weapon and cut down his brave opponent, leaving his 
attendants to finish off the business. 

Hemu's death and the rout of his army, which took place ten 
months after Akbar's accession, gave the Moguls possession of 
Delhi and Agra and disposed of the Padshah's most formidable 
rival ; but the Afghans in the Panjab and in Bengal still re- 
fused to acknowledge his supremacy. A nephew of Sher Shah, 
Sikandar Stir, fought Akbar's army in the Panjab for eight 
months longer before he surrendered on condition of being 
allowed to retire to Bengal, where Muhammad 'Adili Shah still 
exercised a nominal sovereignty. By the successful conclusion 
of the Panjab campaign Bairam Khan's work was accomplished 
and Babur's grandson was firmly seated on the throne of Dellii. 
But Akbar, now growing into manhood and active both in 
mind and body, soon began to find the tutelage of his faithful 
but rather domineering guardian growing more and more 
irksome. Bairam Khan's attachment to the house of Timur 
was a family tradition of several generations. He had been 
a close friend of Akbar's father long before Akbar was born, 
and his loyalty towards Humayun's son was above suspicion. I 
Akbar, however, was as strong-willed as his Protector, more i 
liberal in his views, and of far greater mental capacity ; and 
as the young Padshah became conscious of his own strength 1 
452 



AKBAR: THE PROTECTORATE 

he resented more and more Bairam's fatherly control and his 
somewhat high-handed proceedings. The Protector was a 
politician of Sher Shah's type, a strict discipUnarian, and very 
jealous of Akbar's youthful friendships and of any favours 
which the Padshah might bestow upon others without consulting 
him. 

Bairam's many enemies at court — among whom must be 
reckoned one of Akbar's nurses, Maham Anaga, to whom the 
Padshah was much attached — were not slow to use every 
occasion for fomenting the feehng of irritation on both sides, 
and a trifling incident at last brought about a serious quarrel 
between Akbar and the Protector. Akbar, who was of strong 
physique and fond of all manly sports, was amusing himself 
with an elephant fight when two of the animals got out of 
control, broke out of the enclosure, and stampeded Bairam's 
camp close by — one of them running over the ropes of the 
regent's tents and putting his life in danger. The Khan, in 
spite of Akbar's protestations that the affair was purely acci- 
dental, chose to feel insulted and ordered the mahout of the 
offending elephant, one of Akbar's personal servants, to instant 
execution. For some time there was a feeling of coldness 
between the Protector and the Padshah, but the latter soothed 
Bairam's ruffled feelings by giving him in marriage a niece of 
Humayun's, Sulima Sultana Begam, according to an arrange- 
ment made in his father's lifetime. A reconciliation took place, 
but not long afterwards Bairam Khan, much to Akbar's disgust, 
put to death one of the grandees of the court on account of 
some real or imaginary offence and proceeded to take vengeance 
on one of the Padshah's intimate friends, formerly one of his 
own proteges. 

This was a mulla named Pir Muhammad, half soldier and 
half scholar, who had been appointed by the Protector as 
Akbar's tutor and had acquired considerable influence over 
his royal pupil's mind. He was, however, a man of unscru- 
pulous character, and, having wormed himself into the Padshah's 
favour, had grown insolent both towards the other courtiers 
and towards his former patron. At length he grossly offended 

453 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the Protector when the latter paid a visit to his house, by making 
him wait at the entrance. This so enraged the Khan that 
without consulting Akbar he put the mulla in prison and 
appointed another tutor in his place. Akbar was furious, but 
did not take any decided step to free himself from the Protec- 
tor's control until the whole court was suffering from Bairam's 
irritable temper. Then Akbar, after consulting with Maham 
Anaga and some of his intimate friends, took the opportunity 
of a hunting party, when the Protector's vigilant eye was not 
watching him, to ride off to Delhi, ostensibly to pay a visit 
to his mother, who was ill. A few days after his arrival he 
issued a proclamation announcing that he had taken the 
supreme government into his own hands and requiring all his 
subjects in future to obey no orders from the court except those 
issued in his own name and under the imperial seal. 

Bairam Khan, realising that he had gone too far, sent two 
confidential messengers to Delhi with assurances of his unabated 
loyalty towards the Throne ; but Akbar, determined to show 
that he was now master, took the suggestion of some of his 
courtiers and, instead of admitting them to an audience, 
ordered them to be seized and imprisoned. Bairam Khan's 
pride was deeply wounded by this unexpected treatment, and 
still more by the inevitable effect upon his prestige at court. 
In the first outburst of his wrath he meditated an attempt to 
reassert his authority over the Padshah's person by force, but, 
thinking better of such flagrant disloyalty, he withdrew from 
Agra with the intention of annexing one or other of the provinces 
which as yet did not acknowledge the suzerainty of Akbar 
and making a little kingdom for himself. He first tried Malwa, 
but his former friends in that quarter upon whose assistance 
he relied turned their backs upon him. Then, thinking he 
would try to drive the Afghans from Bengal and estabhsh 
himself there, he turned in that direction, but before he had 
gone far he gave up the plan as hopeless. Thwarted in all 
his ambitions, the disappointed Klian took the resolution to 
make a pilgrimage to Mekka, the last refuge of the pious 
Musalman, and set out for the seaport in Gujerat from whence 

454 



AKBAR: THE PROTECTORATE 

he should embark. On the way another idea occurred to him — 
to try his fortunes in the Pan jab, the province which he had 
conquered for Humayun, and where, although it was now a 
part of Akbar's dominions, he might expect to find better 
support from those who owed their positions to his patronage. 
He consequently halted at Nagaur, in Rajputana, and began 
to collect an army for that purpose. 

Akbar, as soon as he heard of the recalcitrant Khan's inten- 
tions, sent a peremptory order formally dismissing him from 
office and directing him to proceed at once on his pilgrimage : 
" It being our intention henceforth to govern our people by 
our own judgment, let our well-wisher withdraw from all 
worldly concerns and, retiring to Mekka, far removed from 
the toils of public life, spend the rest of his days in prayer." 
Bairam Khan submitted, not with goodwill but because, like 
the English King's great Chancellor thirty years before this 
time, he saw the downfall of all his hopes and ambitions. Most 
of his retainers, seeing that Akbar's star was in the ascen- 
dant, were deserting the fallen Protector. " Of all those who 
abandoned him at this time, most had been his associates and 
attendants for many years, and owed everything to his favour ; 
but all obligations were in a moment forgotten ; and on the 
occasion of leaving him they even carried with them most of 
his camels and camp equipage." ^ Bairam replied to the 
Padshah's message by returning all his insignia of ofiice — 
his banners, drums, and elephants — and, having completed 
the preparations for his departure, dismissed the rest of his 
retainers except a faithful few who refused to leave their old 
master. Then he moved towards the coast, but with an 
unsettled mind, still brooding over his grievances. 

Akbar, who was now in the Panjab and on the alert, bestowed 
the insignia returned by Bairam upon his foster-father, Atgah 
Khan, and ordered Pir Muhammad to follow Bairam to the 
coast and see him embark for Mekka. Pir Muhammad himself 
had been under orders from the Protector to undertake the 
pilgrimage, and was actually on his way when he received 

^ FerisMa, Briggs' translation, vol. ii, p. 200. 

455 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

news of Bairam's fall, and instantly hastened back to court. 
Akbar was pleased at his tutor's return and conferred upon 
him the title of Khan. Bairam, irritated beyond measure 
by the favours bestowed upon his former dependents and 
avowed enemies, collected an army and marched into the 
Panjab, but was again disappointed in his expectations of help 
from his friends. He was defeated by the imperial army under 
the command of Atgah Khan, and soon found himself hunted 
out of the plains into the hills. As soon as Akbar assumed 
command of the army in person Bairam was constrained to 
throw himself upon the Padshah's mercy. Akbar not only 
despatched a messenger assuring him of forgiveness, but 
endeavoured to mitigate the humiliation of his position by 
sending a deputation of the grandees of the court to conduct 
him to the imperial presence with every mark of distinction. 
When he arrived at lyahore, where Akbar was holding his court, 
Bairam Khan, himself little disposed to tenderness towards 
those who had offended him, was touched at Akbar's gracious 
reception and threw himself in tears at his sovereign's feet. 
Akbar instantly raised him up and made him take his former 
place on his right hand at the head of the grandees of the empire. 
Then he invested him with a splendid robe of honour, and, 
addressing the ex-Protector in dignified words, offered him 
three alternatives. If he preferred a military command he 
might have the governorship of one of the imperial provinces. 
If he chose to remain at court, he should be treated with the 
highest honour as the benefactor of the imperial house. But 
if he felt more disposed to seek retirement in a religious life, 
he should be escorted on his pilgrimage to Mekkaina " manner 
suitable to his rank." Bairam replied humbly that, having once 
lost his sovereign's confidence, he could not wish to continue 
to serve him. " The clemency of the Padshah is enough, and 
his forgiveness is more than a reward for my former services. 
I<et me, therefore, turn my thoughts from this world to another 
and be permitted to proceed to the Holy Shrine." Akbar 
approved of his decision, assigned to him a liberal pension and 
a suitable escort, and then returned to Agra. 
456 



AKBAR: THE PROTECTORATE 

Whether Bairam Khan's intentions were sincere or not — 
and one can hardly imagine that the tough old campaigner 
would have found consolation in the role of a religious devotee — 
he never reached Mekka. He set out for the third time on 
his penitential pilgrimage ; but on his way, after spending a 
pleasant evening with his friends on one of the lakes of Rajpu- 
tana, near Alwar, he was waylaid by a party of Afghans, one 
of whom, while pretending to salute him, drew his dagger and 
stabbed him to the heart. The motive of the crime was said 
to be that the Khan had killed the Afghan's father in battle 
many years before, but there appears to have been a woman 
in the case who had attached herself to Bairam' s suite and 
was the cause of the trouble. Akbar took Bairam's widow 
and her boy of four years under his protection. The former 
eventually entered the Padshah's seraglio. Bairam's son had 
a very distinguished career in the imperial army, and was 
father-in-law to Akbar 's son. Prince Daniyal. 



457 



CHAPTER XVI 

AKBAR AS RULER OF ARYAVARTA 

THE death of the fighting Khan was the close of the 
first chapter of Akbar's reign. The young Padshah 
had proved both his strength of mind and generosity 
of temperament in the duel with his former guardian, but this 
did not deter other truculent generals in the Mogul army from 
defying his authority and asserting the divine right conferred 
by the sword of Islam. And Humayun's unfortunate reign 
was a warning to Akbar of the dangers which threatened him 
from other quarters ; for the Moguls were still regarded as 
foreigners in India, and neither Hindus nor Muhammadans were 
willing to recognize them as their rulers except under compul- 
sion. It required both military genius and the highest states- 
manship to establish the Mogul dynasty upon a stable founda- 
tion, and Akbar soon showed that he was not lacking in either. 
His exceptional physical strength and prowess both as a fighter 
and big-game hunter gave him a great reputation among his 
soldiers. Trained to arms on the battlefield from earl}^ boyhood, 
he had already shown that in strategic capacity and practical 
knowledge of war he was inferior to none of his generals. He 
inherited his father's and grandfather's personal charm and 
knew how to win both the affection of his subjects and the 
respect of his enemies. Above all, he had a high sense of 
honour and justice and was singularly free from sectarian 
prejudices. lyike the ideal Hindu sovereign, he made himself 
accessible to all, was most conscientious in the conduct of State 
affairs, respected all religious sects, and, like Asoka, never 
thought that he honoured his own " by disparaging that of 
another man for trivial reasons." 

Nevertheless it needed all of Akbar's great gifts and his 
458 




31. Akbar enxertainejd by his Poster- brother 



458 



AKBAR AS RULER 

most strenuous exertions during a long reign to overcome the 
difficulties which former Musalman governments had bequeathed 
to him, to exact a willing obedience to his rule from the great 
majority of his subjects, and to weld into a political synthesis 
the many different racial elements which had been contending 
for empire in India since the beginning of the Muhammadan 
invasions. Akbar, like Husain Shah before him, devoted 
himself to the study of Hindu philosophy, and even made a 
bold attempt to bridge over the gulf between the two great 
religious parties of his empire. But he was neither a religious 
enthusiast of Asoka's type nor a secularist in politics. He 
held rather to the political ideal of the Mahabharata — " the 
Heavens are centred in the ethics of the State." 

It was in 1560 that Akbar took into his own hands the 
reins of government, though he remained for two years longer 
under the influence of Maham Anaga and other associates of 
his boyhood. The territories in which he was undisputed ruler 
b}^ that time included, roughly, the Panjab and the present 
United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, besides the fortresses of 
Ajmir and Gwalior in Rajputana. The Afghans in Bengal, 
under the leadership of a son of 'Adili Shah, Sher Shah II, now 
made an attempt to recover Delhi, but were decisively defeated 
by the Mogul army under the command of Khan Zaman-i- 
Shaibani, one of Humayun's best generals. The Khan, how- 
ever, after his victory showed an insubordinate disposition by 
neglecting to send to Agra the elephants captured from the 
enemy, which were a part of the Padshah's share of the spoils. 
Akbar consequently was compelled to march towards Jaunpur 
to bring his refractory general to order. As soon as Khan 
Zaman heard of the Padshah's approach he thought better of 
his disloyal intentions and advanced to pay his respects to his 
sovereign, bringing not only the elephants but the rest of the 
booty, as well as other propitiatory offerings. Khan Zaman 
, had played a distinguished part in the battle of Panipat and 
had rendered great services to the house of Timur previously. 
Akbar, therefore, passed over his general's offence with a 
gentle reprimand, returned him everything except that which 

459 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

belonged of right to the Crown, and shortly afterwards con- 
firmed him in the governorship of Jaunpur, where he had 
already amassed a great fortune. 

Very soon afterwards Akbar was called upon to deal with a 
similar case of insubordination. Another general, Adham Khan 
Atka, the son of Maham Anaga, had been appointed to the 
command of an army sent by Akbar for the conquest of Malwa, 
an undertaking which promised to be easy, for Baz Bahadur, 
the Afghan ruler, was wholly absorbed by his passion for his 
lovely Hindu mistress, Rupmati. Though informed of the 
approach of the Mogtil army, Baz Bahadur made no attempt to 
oppose it until it had arrived within twenty miles of Sarangpur. 
Then he was roused from his love dreams, and marched out, 
accompanied by Rupmati, His troops were routed at the 
first onset of the Moguls. Baz Bahadur saved himself by 
flight, but the fair poetess became Adham Khan's prize. Her 
tragic end has been already told. The Mogul general, elated 
by his victory, made a lavish distribution of the spoil to 
enhance his popularity with his soldiers, but appropriated to 
himself the royal ensigns and a great part of the treasure which 
should have been sent to Agra. Akbar lost no time in marching 
into Malwa at the head of the imperial army before his general 
had time to proceed to open rebellion. Adham KJian obtained 
pardon by prompt submission, but was superseded in his 
command by Pir Muhammad. The latter continued the 
campaign successfully for a time, until his barbarous treat- 
ment of the inhabitants of Malwa, both Hindu and Mvisalman, 
strengthened the cause of Baz Bahadur so much that the latter 
was enabled, with the help of the ruler of Khandesh, to chase 
the Moguls out of his dominions. Pir Muhammad was drowned 
while his defeated army was crossing the Narbada. To 
retrieve these disasters Akbar sent another army under the 
command of one of his Uzbek generals, Abdulla Khan, who 
at last captured Mandu and again compelled Baz Bahadur to 
take to the hills. The campaign ended, as before stated, in 
Baz Bahadur's submission. Akbar subsequently gave him a 
command in the imperial army. 
460 



AKBAR AS RULER 

In spite of Akbar's tact and firmness the unruly spirit of 
his officers still continued to manifest itself. Abdulla Khan 
quickly followed the example of his predecessor in the governor- 
ship of Malwa by an attempt at rebellion, which Akbar frus- 
trated by marching against him and compelling him after 
some fighting to take refuge in Gujerat. Shortly afterwards a 
tragedy which occurred in the precincts of the imperial palace 
at Agra gave fresh proof of the ungovernable temper of the 
Padshah's retainers. Adham Khan, whom Akbar had kept at 
court after his misconduct as a general, was jealous of the 
promotion of another of the companions of Akbar's boyhood, 
an old Afghan general named Muhammad Atgah Khan, who 
had assisted in suppressing Bairam Khan's revolt and had lately 
been appointed Vakil, or Prime Minister. He accordingly 
entered into a conspiracy with several other courtiers to get 
rid of him. One night when Atgah Khan was sitting with 
other grandees of the court — some of whom were in the plot — 
in the Diwan-i-Khas, Adham Khan appeared with a few of 
his retainers. All excepting the Vakil, who was reading the 
Quran, rose to greet him. Adham Khan, pretending to be 
mortally offended, took out his dagger and stabbed the minister 
to the heart. He then went, dagger in hand, towards the 
Padshah's private apartments, adjoining the audience chamber. 
Akbar, who had been roused from sleep by the noise, looked 
out and saw the body of Atgah Khan weltering in blood on the 
floor. Seizing his sword, he went after the assassin, who turned 
and fled up a staircase, but was seized by the palace attendants. 
Akbar's first impulse was to avenge his minister's death with 
his own sword, but Adham Khan, presuming on his intimacy 
with the Padshah, caught hold of his arms and begged him 
to inquire into the cause of the quarrel. Akbar shook him 
off in disgust and ordered the attendants to throw him down 
from the terraced roof of the palace. Adham Khan's mother, 
Maham Anaga, died of grief on hearing of the punishment of 
her son, and Akbar had them both buried in a tomb he built 
for them at Delhi. 

This tragic event, which took place in 1561, helped to open 

461 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the Padshah's eyes to the evil influence of his intimates in the 
imperial household. His marriage with a Rajput princess 
in the previous year had brought a better atmosphere into 
the inner circles of the court and served to turn his mind 
from the allurements of sport and adventure into more 
intellectual channels. It also had important poUtical conse- 
quences, in bringing him into closer touch with the Hindu 
aristocracy and enlisting their sympathy with the Mogul cause. 
In 1560 Akbar had gone to Ajmir on one of his periodical 
visits to the shrine of a Muslim saint. Shortly afterwards a 
Rajput of the royal family of Amber, Raja Bihari Mall, gave 
him his daughter in marriage, Akbar celebrating the occasion 
by enrolling the Raja and his son, Bhagwan Das, among the 
nobles of his court. 

Raja Bihari Mall had been known to Akbar from the first 
year of his reign. A slight incident which had occurred when 
he was presented at court had given the Padshah a favourable 
impression of the Rajputs. Akbar was still a boy, and in a 
boyish spirit of adventure had mounted an untrained elephant, 
which became restive when the Raja's retinue appeared. 
Akbar's own attendants made way for the unruly animal, but 
the Rajputs remained immovable by the side of their chieftain. 
The Raja became Akbar's fast friend, and after his daughter's 
marriage was made a grandee of the empire, with the command 
of five thousand horse. His son, Raja Bhagwan Das, and the 
latter 's nephew. Raja Man Singh, also joined the imperial 
service. This was the beginning of the devoted attachment 
of the Rajputs to the Mogul dynasty. Akbar showed his 
appreciation of their loyalty by giving them some of the highest 
commands in his army, and they proved themselves wholly 
worthy of his confidence. The Raja Bhagwan Das once saved 
Akbar's life in battle, and was given the title of Amir-al-Umara, 
or Chief Grandee of the Empire. Raja Man Singh was even- 
tually raised to the command of seven thousand horse — a 
distinction which Akbar only conferred upon his third son, 
Prince Daniyal, and subsequently on two Musalman generals. 
Akbar was a much-married man. According to Mogul 
462 



AKBAR AS RULER 

tradition, if the Padsliali fell in love with a married woman 
her husband was bound to set her free immediately by giving 
her a divorce. Akbar occasionally exercised this sovereign 
right over his Musalman subjects, and several Hindu princes 
ratified political alliances by giving him a daughter in marriage. 
The imperial harem was consequently extensive. The whole 
establishment, says Abul Fazl, numbered over five thousand 
women, each with a separate apartment. The daughter of 
Raja Bihari Mall was known by her Muhammadan name, 
Mariam Zamani. She and her brother always had great 
influence at court. Mariam was the mother of Akbar's son and 
heir. Prince Salim, afterwards known as Jahangir. Her palace 
at Fatehpur-Sikri,^ adjoining the Great Mosque built by Akbar, 
was planned according to the royal palaces of Rajputana and 
contained a Hindu chapel — a striking proof of Akbar's broad- 
minded tolerance in religious matters, for it was an open 
defiance not only of the traditions of the house of Timtir, 
but of ail orthodox Musalman opinion, to permit the practice 
of infidel superstitions in the precincts of the imperial palace. 
Akbar, however, did not allow personal sympathies to stand 
in the way of his poHtical plans. While he was laying the 
foundations of his great scheme for reconcihng the religious 
differences which divided Hindu from Musalman his armies 
were actively engaged in the attempt to break down the 
political independence of those Hindu states in Rajputana 
which had survived the repeated attacks of other Musalman 
conquerors. Before leaving Ajmir with his Rajput bride he 
had made arrangements with the Governor — his brother-in-law, 
Mirza Sharif-ud-din Husain — ^for the siege of the fortress of 
Mirtha, in the territory of Udai Singh, Rana of Mewar, This 
operation occupied the Mogxil army during the greater part 
of 1561. The place was stoutly defended by two Rajput 
chieftains, the Rajas Jai Mall and Devi Das, but after a long 
siege the systematic mining operations of the Mogul engineers 

^ Now known as Jodh Bai's palace, possibly after Jahangir's Rajput wife, 
the daughter of the Raja of Jodhpur. See Handbook to Agra and the Taj, 
by the author. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

made breaches in the walls, and the garrison was reduced to a 
state of famine. Jai Mall accepted the terms offered by the 
Mogul general — to surrender their money and effects and to 
march out with their horses and arms. The other chieftain 
refused, and after the usual jauhdr made a desperate effort 
with five hundred of his followers to cut his way through the 
besiegers. Half of that number succeeded, carrying off the 
head of their chieftain so that the funeral rites might be duly 
performed. 

Mirtha fell in the early part of 1562. Akbar was compelled 
to postpone further operations on account of the continued 
insubordination of his generals. Sharif -ud-din, soon after 
his success in Rajputana, joined other malcontents and went 
into revolt. The army which Akbar sent against him suffered 
a heavy defeat, but eventually the rebel general was driven 
to take refuge in Gujerat, where he continued to intrigue 
against his sovereign. The Uzbek officers in Bengal, instigated 
by Abdulla Khan and by Khan Zaman, whose previous 
offence had been overlooked by Akbar, then stirred up the 
hostility of the Afghans to Mogul rule. It took Akbar more 
than two years to reduce these turbulent Musalman subjects 
to order. In the interval a part of the imperial forces in 
Rajputana was engaged in the conquest of the principality 
of Garrah, in Central India, where the wealth and fame of the 
Rani Durgavati had excited the cupidity of the neighbouring 
Mogul governor, Asaf Khan. The Rani, who, as before 
mentioned,^ had put to flight Baz Bahadur's army, marched 
out at the head of her troops to oppose the invaders, but in 
the battle which followed Asaf Khan won a decisive victory, 
after Durgavati had been disabled by an arrow in her eye 
and had stabbed herself with a dagger rather than become a 
prisoner of the Musalman. The rich spoils captured by Asaf 
Khan included a number of gold and silver images and a 
hundred jars of gold coins. As usual, the Mogul general was 
loth to part with his booty, and Akbar was compelled to resort 
to compulsion to obtain the dues of the imperial treasury. 

1 Supra, p. 355. 
464 



AKBAR AS RULER 

It was to be expected that among the motley horde of enemies 
gathered round Akbar there would be some who would not 
shrink from using every means, fair or foul, to get rid of him. 
At the time of Sharif-ud-din's revolt, while Akbar was riding 
through the suburbs of Delhi, a horseman who had been in 
the general's service joined the imperial retinue unobserved, 
and, while pretending to aim at a bird in the sky, suddenly 
lowered his weapon and shot the Emperor in the shoulder. The 
wound, fortunately, was not dangerous for a man of Akbar's 
robust constitution, and when the arrow had been extracted and 
justice had been done the Padshah proceeded on his journey. 
The criminal, who had been seized, was put to death imme- 
diately, Akbar refusing to allow him to be tortured in order 
to extract the names of his accomplices, on the ground that 
evidence of that kind was worthless and more likely to incrimi- 
nate the innocent than the guilt3^ Perhaps the Padshah did 
not Uke his brother-in-law to be implicated in the dastardly 
deed ; in any case the outrage only added to the discomfiture 
of Akbar's enemies and served to enhance his prestige among 
all right-thinking Musalmans.^ 

In 1563 Akbar increased his popularity with his Hindu 
subjects, many of whom were now his most loyal adherents, 
by abolishing all taxes on pilgrims. Some years afterwards 
he also abolished the oppressive jizy a, or poll-tax on unbelievers, 
which from the days of the Prophet had been a sacrosanct 
institution in Muhammadan finance. From 1564 to 1567 Akbar 
was chiefly occupied in quelling the revolt of his Uzbek officers 
led by Khan Zaman and Asaf Khan. He effected his purpose 
partly by consummate diplomacy and partly by military 
strategy. Though fully conscious how little reliance was to 
be placed upon his shifty antagonists' professions of submission, 
his policy was, whenever possible, to placate them by generous 
treatment and at the same time to inspire them with respect 
for his power and indomitable will, rather than add to the 
number of his enemies by a studied exhibition of ' f rightfulness.' 

^ Badaimi gives a slightly different account of the incident and connects 
|it with Akbar's exercise of his royal prerogative with regard to matrimony. 

2 G 465 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

But in the last resort Akbar did not hesitate to inflict con- 
dign punishment upon the irreconcilables, according to the 
barbarous methods of the period. 

After the imperial forces had suffered several reverses the 
revolt in Bengal was finally crushed by Akbar's taking command 
in person. With his usual vigour and determination he crossed 
the Ganges at nightfall, in spite of monsoon floods, and next 
morning at sunrise attacked the rebel army with a picked body 
of two thousand cavalry and elephants. The Uzbeks, beUeving 
themselves secure with the Ganges between them and the 
Mogul army, neglected all precautions, so that the sound of the 
Padshah's war-drums was the first intimation they received 
of his approach. Nevertheless it was only by desperate 
fighting, in the course of which the arch-rebel Khan Zaman 
and several of his associates were killed, that Akbar succeeded 
in gaining a complete victory. Five of the rebel leaders who 
were taken prisoners suffered the punishment of traitors by 
being trodden to death by elephants. But Asaf Khan had 
previously obtained Akbar's pardon by submission and had 
regained the Padshah's favour by taking an energetic part 
in suppressing the rebellion. 

While these events were in progress Akbar's relatives — some 
of them living at Kabul and some under Akbar's protection in 
India — were, according to an old family tradition, stirring up 
more trouble for him. Kabul was nominally a part of Akbar's 
dominions, but it had never acknowledged his authority and 
continued to be a city of refuge for an unscrupulous gang of 
intriguers. Their manoeuvres, however, did not give Akbar 
much anxiety, except for an ineffectual attempt on the part 
of his brother, Mirza Hakim, to obtain possession of the Panjab. 
By the end of 1566 Akbar had broken most of his Mogul rivals 
and had commenced to strengthen his capital, with the aid of 
an army of skilled Indian masons, by building the present fort of 
Agra, on the site of an older one constructed by Salim Shah, with 
its great walls seventy feet in height and imposing gateways. 

He now felt himself free to renew the campaign in Rajputana 
which had been broken off by Abdulla Khan Uzbek's revolt 
466 




32. The Siege of Chitor 



466 



AKBAR AS RULER 

and by other disturbances in the army. The time was favour- 
able for the Mogul arms. The son and successor of the great 
Rana Sanga, Udai Singh, who was now the premier prince 
of Rajputana, lacked his father's energy and military skill. 
The miUtary resources of the Rajputs had been greatly reduced 
in the struggle of centuries against the Musalman. Akbar had 
won over several of the most influential chieftains to his side 
and had gathered together a powerful and well-disciplined 
army, which in artillery and engineering equipment was 
immensely superior to the forces the Rajputs could bring into 
the field. The Rana, on Akbar's approach, retired to the 
inaccessible hilly country which separated his territories from 
Gujerat, leaving a force of eight thousand Rajputs under the 
command of Raja Jai Mall, the defender of Mirtha, a brave 
and capable soldier, in charge of the stronghold of Chitor. 
Akbar in October 1567 proceeded to invest the fortress, em- 
ploying five thousand skilled craftsmen in the engineering 
operations by which the walls were to be undermined. 

The famous citadel, built upon a lofty spur of rock jutting 
out into the plains of Mewar, was a place of great natural 
strength. The garrison was provisioned for a long siege, and 
perennial springs within the walls gave an inexhaustible supply 
of water. But Akbar had under his command the best military 
engineers of the period, and though the Rajputs had the 
advantage of position and defended themselves with the courage 
of despair, they were unable to prevent the besiegers from 
gradually pushing their trenches nearer and nearer to the walls. 
Ferishta describes the scientific manner in which the siege was 
conducted : " The approaches were made by sahat, a descrip- 
tion of defence for the besiegers peculiar to India. The 
sahats are constructed in the following manner : The zigzags, 
commencing at gunshot distance from the fort, consist of a 
double wall, and by means of blinds or stuffed gabions covered 
with leather the besiegers continue their approaches till they 
arrive near to the walls of the place to be attacked. The miners 
then proceed to sink their shafts and carry on their galleries 
underground for the construction of the mines, in which 

467 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

having placed the powder and blown up the works, the storming 
party rushes from the sabat, or superior galleries, and assaults 
the place." ^ Neither the material employed nor the method 
of its use was an invention of the Mogul engineers ; both had 
been used in Indian warfare for at least a century previously. 
" On the present occasion," continues Ferishta, " two sabats, 
or superior galleries, having been constructed, two mines were 
carried under bastions at different spots, and they were both 
fired at the same time. It happened that one of them exploded 
before the other, and a practicable breach was formed. Two 
thousand men, prepared to storm, advanced immediately, 
under the supposition that both mines had been sprung, and the 
parties divided in order to enter both breaches at once. One 
of the mines, however, exploded only just as one of the parties 
got close over it, when five hundred men were killed, besides 
a number of the enemy who were crowded on the bastion. "^ 
Both attacks consequently failed. The besiegers, who had 
lost fifteen officers and a considerable number of men, were 
disheartened by the disaster. But Akbar ordered other mines 
to be prepared and the siege was continued with renewed 
energy. At length, in February 1568, everything was ready 
for the final assault. One night, as Akbar was giving his 
orders, a flash of torchHght upon the fortress walls revealed 
the figure of Raja Jai Mall directing the repair of the damage 
caused by the besiegers' mines. Snatching a matchlock from 
one of his attendants, Akbar fired at the Rajput general and 
shot him through the head. A cry of despair arose from the 
doomed citadel as the Rajputs bore the body of their gallant 
chieftain away. Akbar instantly prepared to take advantage 
of his success by ordering his troops to advance to the breaches, 
which, to their astonishment, they found undefended. At the 
first streak of dawn the besiegers clambered into the fortress 
almost unopposed, for most of the defenders had spent the 
last night of the siege in performing the funeral rites of their 
chieftain, his wives and many of the Rajput women sacrificing 
themselves in a vast pyre lighted in the basement of the palace. 

I' [^ Briggs' translation, vol. ii, pp. 229-230. - Ibid., pp. 230-231. 

468 



AKBAR AS RULER 

The fighting men had now retired within their temple walls 
to prepare for the forlorn hope of the Kshatriya warrior. 
Akbar, wishing to spare the lives of the brave Rajputs, 
summoned them to surrender, but as they refused to accept 
quarter he mounted his elephant and gave orders for the 
temples to be stormed. Many thousands of Rajputs fell in 
this last assault. Some cut their way through, and a con- 
siderable body saved themselves and their families by a clever 
ruse. They made a pretence of binding their own women and 
children as prisoners, and, seizing a favourable opportunity, 
marched quietly through the cordon of besiegers as if they 
were a detachment of Akbar's Rajput allies conducting their 
captives to the rear. 

Probably they were inspired to make this attempt to save 
their families from sacrifice by the knowledge that Akbar 
some years previously had issued an order forbidding the usual 
Musalman practice of making slaves of prisoners of war ; 
otherwise the Rajputs would hardly have run the risk of their 
falling into the hands of the Moguls. Akbar subsequently 
forbade the Rajput practice of forcing their widows to immolate 
themselves on the funeral-pile of their husbands, and personally 
interfered to save the daughter-in-law of the Raja of Jodhpur 
when the latter was about to compel her to become a sati. 

Several other Rajput chieftains after the fall of Chitor made 
their submission to Akbar, but the Rana remained secure in 
his mountain fortresses and the royal line of Mewar steadfastly 
refused to follow the example of other Hindu princes by giving 
a daughter of the Suryavamsa to the Great Mogul. Akbar 
returned in triumph to Agra, carrying with him as a trophy, 
instead of a bride, a pair of wooden gates taken from the 
fortress, which he set up in the zanana of his own palace. 
The next year he took two other Rajput fortresses, Rantambhor 
and Kalanjar. He also won another Rajput wife, the daughter 
of a chieftain of Bikanir. About a year after the capture of 
Chitor, Mariam Zamani presented Akbar with a son and heir. 
Akbar had been anxious regarding the succession to the throne, 
as her twin children, born previously, had died in infancy. 

469 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

When passing by vSikri, a village near Agra, he had consulted 
a famous Musalman hermit, the Shaikh Salim Chishti, on the 
matter. Acting on the latter's advice, Akbar made the place 
his headquarters, and nine months afterwards Mariam gave 
birth to a son, who was named Salim in honour of the holy 
man in whose house he was born. The next year another son, 
Murad, was born in the same auspicious place. So Akbar 
determined to make Sikri a permanent place of residence, and 
commenced to build the now deserted city, called by the 
name of Fatehpur, 'the City of Victory,' after his successful 
campaign in Gujerat, 

Fatehpur-Sikri was Akbar's capital for seventeen years, 
and it continues to be a splendid monument of his genius as a 
statesman and of the most eventful years of his reign. Here 
the Padshah, when still a young man, gathered round him 
the ablest and most learned men of his time, who were his 
advisers and collaborators in reorganising the system of 
government and in carrying out his great schemes of political, 
social, and religious reform. The city itself even as it now 
stands, a fragment of its former self and without the charm 
which the splendid lake and the fine gardens must have given 
it, reveals to us a great deal of the mind of the greatest of the 
Great Moguls, It was planned by the royal city-builders of 
Rajputana in Akbar's service on traditional Hindu lines, 
modified according to the Padshah's own ideas. The Grand 
Mosque, the Jami' Masjid, towering high over the centre of 
the city, was built in honour of the holy man, the Shaihk 
Salim, whose tomb of white marble, fantastically carved, 
glitters in the centre of the vast quadrangle. The mosque 
was finished in 1571, the magnificent triumphal gateway, the 
Buland Darwaza, being added some years afterwards to 
commemorate Akbar's conquest of the Dekhan, According to 
an inscription over the central arch, the mosque was intended 
to be a replica of the Grand Mosque at Mekka, but obviously it 
represents the Indian builders' conception of the holy shrine 
of Islam, for, like all Indian mosques, it is an adaptation of 
the Indo-Aryan building tradition to Muhammadan ritual, 
470 




The J ami Masjid, FaTEhpur-Sikri 




33- 



The Daftar Khana, Patehpur-Sikri 



470 



AKBAR AS RULER 

Under the shadow of the Jami' Masjid lived the two famous 
brothers Faizi and Abul Fazl, Akbar's most intimate Musalman 
friends and counsellors. Their father, the Shaikh Mubarak, 
was of Arab descent and reputed to be the most learned man 
in Islam. He had taken a prominent part in the discussion 
of a question which had been agitating the mind of Islam for 
a long time — the expected appearance of a new Prophet, or 
Mahdi, who at the end of the millennium of the Muhammadan 
era was to restore the pristine purity of the faith and prepare 
the way for the Day of Judgment. There had been many 
popular preachers who in the state of psychical exaltation 
induced by the discussion had come forward as the promised 
Mahdi, and Mubarak in his youth had attached himself to 
one of them, the Shaikh 'Alai, who, as before mentioned, 
had been condemned as a heretic by the 'Ulamas of Islam 
(SaHm) Shah's court. After the death of Shaikh 'Alai, Mubarak 
had established a school of divinity at Agra, but had incurred 
the enmit^^ of the Sunni 'Ulamas by his unorthodox teaching 
and had fled from the city to save his life. In the first years 
of his reign Akbar, though little disposed to religious intolerance 
himself, had not interfered to prevent the 'Ulamas of Agra and 
Delhi, who were strict Sunnis, from persecuting those who 
showed Shiah tendencies, and Shaikh Mubarak suffered much 
from the machinations of his enemies at court. Faizi was the 
Shaikh's eldest son. lyike his father, he was deeply versed in 
Arabic learning, and before he was twenty-one had made a 
reputation both as a poet and physician. In 1568, when Akbar 
was besieging Chitor, he received a summons to appear at 
court, and the young Emperor and the poet soon became fast 
friends. The Shaikh and his family were now safe from 
further persecution. 

In the meantime Abul Fazl, Faizi's younger brother, under 
his father's instruction was throwing himself into the study of 
philosophy and reUgion with intense ardour, and found such 
delight "in passing nights in lonely spots with true seekers 
after the truth" that he had half resolved to spend his life 
as a wanderer, like the bhikku or sannyasin, holding converse 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

with the sages of Mongolia or the hermits of Lebanon, " with 
the lamas of Tibet, with the Padris of Portugal," or sitting 
at the feet of the Parsis and the learned of the Zend-Avesta. 
But a few years after the foundation of Akbar's new capital 
Abul Fazl, at the age of seventeen, was likewise summoned to 
court, and his whole outlook upon life was altered. He found 
in Akbar not only the gracious sovereign and protector of his 
kinsfolk, but a kindred spirit. The Padshah, when his active 
mind was not occupied with practical affairs of State, was 
deeply concerned with spiritual matters, and woiild often pass 
the morning alone in meditation, " sitting on a large flat stone 
of an old building which lay near the palace in a lonely spot, 
with his head bent over his chest and gathering the bliss of the 
early hours." When he arrived at his twentieth year Akbar 
confessed that his soul was filled with exceeding sorrow from the 
consciousness that he " lacked spiritual provision for the journey 
of life." " Although I am the master of so vast a kingdom 
and all the appliances of government are in my hands, yet 
since true greatness consists in doing the will of God, m}^ mind 
is not at ease in this diversity of sects and creeds ; and apart 
from this outward pomp of circumstance, with what satis- 
faction in my despondency can I undertake the sway of 
empire ? I await the coming of some discreet man of principle 
who will resolve the difiiculties of my conscience." ^ 

Akbar detested the narrow sectarianism of the court 'Ulamas 
to whom he had to refer on questions of Muhammadan law 
and doctrine, but was to a great extent in their hands, for, 
owing perhaps to the vicissitudes of his boyhood, he could 
neither read nor write. As an ' illiterate,' he would have been 
disqualified in modern times for the humblest office of State, 
yet, as he himself observed in one of his pithy sayings, " the 
prophets were all illiterate." He was already highly educated 
in an Indian sense and the foremost statesman of his age. 
He had been taught by the traditional Indian oral method, 
and with the help of Faizi's and Abul Fazl's book-learning was 

' Am-i-Akban ("The Sayings of His Majesty"), Jarrett's translation, 
vol. iii, p. 386. 

472 



AKBAR AS RULER 

now in a position to meet the 'Ulamas on their own ground. 
The imperial library at Fatehpur, in charge of the two brothers, 
was filled with all the best Sanskrit, Hindu, Persian, Greek, 
Kashmirian, and Arabic literature, either in originals or in 
translations made by experts under Akbar's orders. " Among 
books of renown," says Abul Fazl, " there are few that are 
not read in His Majesty's assembly hall ; and there are 
no historical facts of the past ages, or curiosities of science, 
or interevSting points of philosophy, with which His Majesty, a 
leader of impartial sages, is unacquainted." ^ Faizi continued 
to devote himself to literary pursuits. Akbar appointed him 
tutor to the imperial princes and made him his Persian Poet 
I^aureate. Abul Fazl, soon after his presentation at court, 
became one of the leaders of the philosophical discussions which, 
as in the days of the Indo- Aryan monarchs, began to form one 
of the chief distractions of the Fatehpur court. He quickly 
rose to be one of the principal grandees of the empire, and 
eventually became Akbar's Vazlr, or Finance Minister. 

Akbar himself from the time of the founding of Fatehpur 
seems to have openly adopted Indo- Aryan political and social 
ideals, so far as they were compatible with those of absolute 
monarchy. His throne, raised upon a Vishnu pillar in the 
Diwan-i-Klhas, and approached by the four-went ways of the 
cosmic cross, was the traditional Hindu symbol of universal 
dominion. Though he honoured Musalman saints, like the 
Shaikh Salim, and observed all the forms of Muslim ritual, 
he allowed absolute freedom of conscience to men of other 
creeds, and must have given grave offence to many of the true 
believers by permitting his Rajput Sultanas to perform their 
infidel rites within a stone's-throw of the J ami' Masjid. The 
small pavilion known as the Yogi's Seat, close to the Diwan-i- 
Khas, is said to have been built for one of the Hindu ascetics 
with whom Akbar was fond of conversing on metaphysical 
problems. The Jesuit Fathers from Goa were among those to 
whom Akbar listened with great attention. He allowed them 
to build a chapel at Agra, and once, it is said, came there alone, 
^ Am-i-Akbari, Blochmann's translation, vol. i, p. 103. 

473 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

removed his turban, and offered prayers, first kneeling in the 
Christian manner, then prostrating himself according to 
Musalman custom, and finally according to the form of Hindu 
ritual. It is also stated that he granted permission for the 
funeral of one of the Christian community to pass through 
the streets of Fatehpur with all the ceremonies of the Catholic 
faith, and that it was attended by many of the Muhammadan 
and Hindu inhabitants. 

Akbar's thirst for knowledge was insatiable. He had all 
the works which his librarians translated into Persian read to 
him, and gave personal interviews to learned men of all denomi- 
nations and sects — Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Brahmans, 
Zoroastrians, and Musalmans. " Night and day," says Badauni, 
" people did nothing but inquire and investigate : profound 
points of science, the subtleties of revelation, the curiosities 
of history, the wonders of nature, of which large volumes could 
only give a summary abstract, were ever spoken of." Badauni 
was a learned muUa of the strictly orthodox party whom 
Akbar appointed as one of his court imams, or chaplains, on 
account of his beautiful voice. His history of Akbar's reign, 
written in secret and only brought to light many years after- 
wards, is all the more valuable as he was a bitter enemy of 
Abul Fazl and a very severe critic of his sovereign. Akbar 
enjoyed freedom of speech and dehghted in the discomfiture 
of the narrow and pedantic divines who represented the 
Sunni faction at court. vSoon after Abul Fazl's arrival at 
court Akbar built an Ihddat-Khdna, or Debating Hall, and 
every Thursday evening the Muhammadan courtiers and 
'Ulamas met, under the presidency of the Padshah, to discuss 
questions of Islamic law and doctrine. Philosophical debates, 
as we have seen, had always been the chief intellectual recreation 
at a Hindu court, but this was an innovation in Mogul court 
life not very pleasing to the old-fashioned mullas. In meeting 
the arguments of the younger generation of Islamic scholars, 
represented by Faizi and Abul Fazl, they often lost their tempers 
and "a horrid noise and confusion ensued." Once Akbar 
turned to Badauni and ordered him to rejoort any 'Ulama who 

474 



AKBAR AS RULER 

misbehaved or spoke nonsense, so that he (the Emperor) might 
make him leave the hall. Badauni said in an undertone to 
his neighbour, Asaf Khan, " If I were to carry out that order 
most of the 'Ulamas would have to leave," when the Padshah 
turned to him and asked what he had said. Akbar laughed 
heartily when he was told, and repeated Badauni's remark to 
the courtiers near the throne as a capital joke. 

In the throne room and public audience-hall, where Hindu 
and Musalman courtiers met on terms of perfect equality, 
religious questions were often discussed with a freedom very 
unusual in a Muslim court. Birbal, the Brahman Poet lyaureate 
and one of Akbar 's favourites, would amuse the court with his 
witticisms at the expense of the 'Ulamas, who hated him with 
an intense bitterness, which often led to violent scenes in 
spite of the Padshah's presence. One of the rajas once set 
the whole court laughing by a sarcastic remark made when 
the subject of Hindu veneration for the cow was mentioned. 
" Allah Himself," said he, " showed great respect for cows, 
for the cow is mentioned in the first chapter of the Quran." ^ 

The two Rajput Sultanas and other Hindu members of the 
imperial harem influenced Akbar's habits and induced him to 
shave his beard, and to give up eating beef, garlic, and onions — 
because, so it was whispered at court, " these things are incon- 
venient in kissing." He gave grave offence to many Musalman 
courtiers by insisting that they too should shave off their 
beards. But Akbar was as resolute in putting down Hindu 
practices which offended him as in braving the hostility of 
orthodox Musalmans by adopting those which he liked. He 
not only prohibited the burning of Hindu widows against 
their will and prevented the rajas from evading the prohibition ; 
he also forbade the marriage of boys before the age of sixteen 
and of girls before fourteen, and interfered with the Hindu 
law forbidding the re-marriage of widows. In the first part 
of his reign, however, Akbar always seemed anxious to defer 
to orthodox Musalman opinion and to reconcile his public and 

1 Surat-ul-baqarah ("Sura of the Heifer"), Badauni, Ivowe's translation, 
vol. ii, p. 215. 

475 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

private actions with Islamic tradition. Thus at one of the 
Thursday evening meetings he broached the subject of plural 
marriages and appointed a Qazi to decide whether the Padshah 
could lawfully take more than the usual number of free- 
born wives, as he himself had done. A Uvely discussion 
followed. The 'Ulamas were unanimous that four was the 
limit fixed by the Prophet, but there was a great difference 
of opinion as to the legal aspect of Akbar's case. One of 
Akbar's intimates, his foster-brother, Mirza 'Aziz Kokah, had 
an explanation of the inner meaning of the rule. It enabled 
the good Musalman to enjoy the highest connubial bliss by 
having a Persian wife to talk to, a Khurasani wife to do his 
housework, a Hindu wife to be a mother for his children, and 
a Turki wife to whip as a warning to the other three. The 
Qazi settled the matter to Akbar's satisfaction, for he was 
careful to appoint one who could be relied upon to give a 
favourable verdict. The mullas of the court generally suc- 
ceeded in finding warrant for the Padshah's unconventional 
proceedings in some rare Arabic manuscript opportunely 
brought to light. One such document — " an old worm-eaten 
MS. in queer characters " — was produced to prove that the 
coming Mahdi was to have many wives and would shave his 
beard. Akbar's maturer judgment on the subject of marriage 
is recorded by Abul Fazl in one of "His Majesty's wise sayings " : 
" To seek more than one wife is to work one's own undoing. 
In case she were barren or bore no son, it might then be expe- 
dient. Had I been wise earlier, I should have taken no woman 
from my own kingdom into my seraglio, for my subjects are 
to me in the place of children." ^ This was doubtless a reflec- 
tion of his intense grief for the misconduct of his thiee sons, 
Salim, Murad, and Daniyal. 

Among the interesting buildings still existing at Fatehpur- 
Sikri are several of the public offices in which Akbar and his 
ministers administered the affairs of the empire. The Daftar- 
Khana, or Record Office, was where Abul Fazl sat when he 
acted as Finance Minister and directed the staff of officials 

^ Am-i-Akbart, Jarrett's translation, vol. iii, p. 398. 
476 



AKBAR AS RULER 

busily engaged in drawing up innumerable reports and arranging 
the State records in the pigeon-holes recessed in the massive 
stone walls of the building. It was connected by a corridor 
with Akbar's private apartments, so that the minister could 
quickly run over for the Padshah's orders and lay before him 
the daily reports of State business. Akbar from the time he 
became Emperor de facto as well as de jure exercised a close 
supervision over the smallest details of government. The 
Am-i-Akhan, written by Abul Fazl himself, details the duties 
of his staff. They had first to act as court journalists — to 
record the orders and doings of the Emperor, what he ate and 
drank, when he slept and when he rose from bed, when 
he marched and when he halted ; his acts as the spiritual 
guide of the nation ; the vows made to him and his daily and 
monthly spiritual exercises ; what he said and which books were 
read out to him. This official gazette and court journal also 
noted the arrival and departure of courtiers and gave a list of 
official appointments ; a diary of current events ; a schedule 
of births, marriages, and deaths, including fatalities in the 
imperial stables ; the police news, or a record of capital punish- 
ments inflicted and reprieves granted by the Padshah ; a 
' sports column ' recording the imperial hunting parties, the 
animal fights and the bettings thereon, the games of chess 
and cards, polo, chaupar, and nard ; ^ a meteorological report, 
or record of " extraordinary phenomena," and harvest reports. 
The financial news gave the increase and decrease of imperial 
taxation, a notice of contracts, sales, and mone}^ transfers, 
receipts of tribute, grants of rent-free land, and payments on 
account of the army. 

This voluminous report, when it had been corrected by one 
of Akbar's private secretaries, was laid before the Emperor 
for his approval. A copy of it was then made, signed by 
three officials, and handed over to writers, who made a 

^ In the northern half of the great palace quadrangle is a pachisi board, 
cut in the pavement, similar to the one in the Samman Burj in the Agra 
palace. Here Akbar and the ladies of the court amused themselves by 
playing the game with slave-girls as living pieces. 

477 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

precis of its contents, which was kept for record after being 
signed and sealed by different ministers. Among other duties 
of the record-keepers was the preparation of papers for Akbar's 
signature, the receipt of departmental reports and the filing 
of the Padshah's minutes thereon, and the reporting of the 
proceedings of the philosophical meetings. Akbar's object, 
says his faithful biographer, was " that every duty be properly 
performed ; that there be no undue increase or decrease in 
any department ; that dishonest people be removed, and trust- 
worthy people be held in esteem ; and that active servants may 
work without fear, and negligent and forgetful men be held 
in check." ^ 

On the east side of the Fatehpur palace and of easy access 
from the throne room, or Diwan-i-Khas, was Akbar's DiM^an- 
i-am, or Hall of Public Audience, where he frequently appeared 
to transact public business, to receive the reports of officers, 
to inspect the works of the court painters and craftsmen, to 
hold a durbar, or to administer justice. The Padshah generally 
showed himself to his people twice daily — first after performing 
his morning devotions and afterwards in the Diwan-i-am. 
Though he was particular in matters of court ceremonial and 
etiquette, in his judicial capacity he was studiously simple 
both in dress and demeanour, taking much pains to make himself 
accessible to the meanest of his subjects by seating himself, 
or standing, below the gaddi or judgment seat, and giving 
personal attention to every case. 

Akbar's intellectual interests were by no means wholly 
confined to literature, philosophy, and religion. He gave close 
attention to the work of the court builders and the painters 
who decorated the palaces of Agra and Fatehpur, illustrated 
profusely the books of the imperial library, and recorded the 
history of the reign ; also to the weavers of fine carpets, brocades, 
and other textiles, the goldsmiths, jewellers, and other skilled 
craftsmen employed in the imperial workshops, which numbered 
nearly a hundred. Akbar took a special interest in the ordnance 
factory, where many pieces of artillery and special kinds of 

' Am-i-Akhan, Blochmann's translation, vol. i, p. 259. 
478 



AKBAR AS RULER 

matchlocks were made after the Padshah's own instructions. 
He also devoted himself to improvements in horse-, cattle-, 
and elephant-breeding. Akbar was a strict economist, both 
in official and private affairs, regulating the expenses of his 
court and household with as much exactitude as those of his 
army. He fixed the prices of food and building material and 
the wages of labourers, and collected statistics for the purpose of 
checking extravagance and corruption in every department 
of the State. At the beginning of his reign, finding that the 
whole revenue administration was hopelessly corrupt, he 
appointed his chief eunuch, Itimad Khan, to reorganize it. 
A systematic inquiry was set on foot to ascertain the production 
of different kinds of land and to assess the taxes thereon. 
A proper system of accounts was introduced and regulations 
were made to prevent the ryots from being plundered. This 
work was afterwards continued by the Raja Todar Mall, who 
was appointed Vakil of the empire in 1583. 

Fatehpur-Sikri has memorials of Faizi, Abul Fazl, and Raja 
Birbal, but none of Todar Mall, unless the Mint and Treasury 
buildings may be connected with his name. Many of the 
ministers and grandees of the empire were only temporary 
residents at Fatehpur, occupying garden-houses on the shores 
of the great lake, now dried up, where the court tournaments 
took place and Akbar amused himself with polo, deer-hunting, 
and hawking. His prowess as a big-game hunter is still remem- 
bered in Indian folk-lore, and Abul Fazl gives many instances, 
but he generally combined State business with recreation, 
using his hunting parties as occasions for making himself 
acquainted with the conditions of the people or for inspecting 
the army. In his youth Akbar was passionately fond of all 
kinds of sport, but later on he revolted against the indiscrimi- 
nate slaughter of animals and reckoned an inordinate passion 
for the chase among the four besetting sins which royalty should 
avoid— the other three being gambling, wine, and women. 



479 



CHAPTER XVII 

AKBAR AS RULER OF ARYAVARTA 

{continued) 

THE seventeen years during which Akbar resided mostly 
at Fatehpur were the most important of his reign. 
They were those in which most of his great administra- 
tive reforms were begun, and his ideas of a State religion took 
shape in the proclamation of the Dm-Ildhi, or Divine Faith, 
from the pulpit of the Jami' Masjid. In the same time he 
also brought to a successful conclusion two of his great cam- 
paigns, ending in the annexation of Gujerat and the final 
conquest of the Afghans in Bengal ; the former being cele- 
brated by the building of the mighty portal of the Jami' 
Masjid known as the Buland Darwaza, one of the most splendid 
achievements of his Rajput master-builders. 

The Moguls in Humayun's reign had once before overrun 
Gujerat, and its conquest was an easy matter for Akbar 's 
well-organized army, for, after having existed for only a 
century and a half as an independent Muhammadan state, 
it had reached the condition so often recurring in the 
political system of Islam — the supreme power had fallen into 
the hands of low-born conspirators of criminal tendencies, 
in whose hands the sword of Islam was mainly an instrument 
of massacre and murder. After the death of Bahadur Shah 
in the harbour of Diu in 1536, his nephew, Mahmud III, 
reigned about eighteen years, and then was assassinated by 
one of his slaves named Burhan, who disposed of other potential 
candidates for the throne by a series of secret murders, but 
shared the fate of his victims on his first appearance in public 
afterwards. The government then fell into the hands of Itimad 
Khan, a trusted servant of the former Sultan who had avenged 
480 



AKBAR AS RULER 

his master's murder by killing Burhan. Itimad put upon the 
throne a puppet prince, Ahmad II, but five years later found 
the new Sultan an inconvenience and, having got rid of him 
by following Burhan's example, set up another under the title 
of Muzaffar Shah III. This arrangement was not acceptable 
to Itimad's rivals at court — a typical gang of Musalman 
adventurers, chiefly Turkish and Abyssinian — so they divided 
the Sultanate among themselves and revolted against Itimad's 
authority. Sultan Mirza, one of the imperial Mogul family, and 
other relatives of Akbar seized the opportunity of fishing in these 
muddy waters, and eventually Itimad fled to Akbar's court and 
invited the Padshah's intervention in the affairs of Gujerat. 

Akbar accordingly in 1572 marched to take possession of 
the Sultanate. As soon as the imperial forces reached Patan, 
Muzaffar Shah, the nominal Sultan, left Ahmadabad and 
presented himself at the Padshah's camp for the purpose of 
surrendering himself and his kingdom. Akbar's relatives, the 
rebellious Mogul Mirzas, gave more trouble. lycaving a garrison 
at Ahmadabad, Akbar pushed on to lay siege to Surat, occupied 
by a part of the rebel forces, but the Mirza in command, 
Ibrahim Husain, evaded him and set out to join the main rebel 
body in the north of Gujerat. Akbar, at the head of a few 
chosen retainers, dashed off in pursuit, and came up with the 
enemy just after they had crossed the river Mhendri, near the 
town of Sarsa. At this moment Akbar was joined by several 
of his most devoted Rajput friends, including Raja Bhagwan 
Das, Raja Man Singh, the Raja of Rantambhor, and a few 
more horsemen. Though the odds were still about seven to 
one against him he resolved to attack at once. Crossing the 
river, the Rajputs charged with Raja Man Singh at their 
head, but they were so galled by the enemy's archers that they 
had to fall back into a clump of prickly pear for shelter, the 
sharp spines of the cactus serving as a barbed-wire defence. 
The enemy's horse now charged in their turn, and Akbar was 
attacked in a narrow lane formed by cactus hedges where 
only three horsemen could ride abreast, and would have been 
overpowered had not Raja Bhagwan Das and his brother come 

zn 481 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

to the rescue. The latter, says Ferishta, " displayed on this 
day the heroism of Rustum and Isfandyar, and, penetrating 
beyond the lane, he repeatedly charged through a body of one 
hundred men, and eventually lost his life." ^ Akbar himself 
performed prodigies of valour, fighting side by side with his 
gallant Rajputs, and seeing his cousin, the Mirza, in the 
enemy's ranks, charged straight at him. Ibrahim did not wait 
to cross swords with the Padshah, but continued his retreat, 
and succeeded in joining the other Mirzas near Patau. 

Akbar went back to direct the siege of Surat, while the 
Mirzas attempted a counter-stroke by laying siege to Patau 
and by sending Ibrahim Husain to invade the Panjab. The 
latter project was frustrated by Raja Rai Singh of Bikanir, 
who had been appointed by Akbar as his governor in Jodhpur, 
while the Mogul garrison of Ahmadabad marched to the relief 
of Patau and attacked the main rebel army, which was driven 
in disorder into the Dekhan. Ibrahim Husain, after being 
defeated by the Raja of Bikanir, retired to his family estate in 
Bihar, but shortly afterwards set off to join his brother in 
raiding the Panjab. The vigilance of Akbar's officers, how- 
ever, again frustrated his schemes. The brothers were taken 
prisoners. Ibrahim died of his wounds, and his head was 
struck off and placed, by Akbar's orders, over one of the gates 
of Agra. His brother was confined in the fortress of Gwalior 
until his death. In 1573 Akbar, having completed the conquest 
of Gujerat by the capture of Surat, returned to his capital. 
The success of the campaign had been chiefly due to the loyalty 
and coturage of the Padshah's Rajput allies, who doubtless 
found much satisfaction in paying off old scores with their 
Gujerati neighbours. 

A month afterwards one of the Mirzas, Muhammad Husain, 
was on the war-path again, and with the help of several Gujerati 
chieftains was besieging Ahmadabad. The imperial troops 
were in difficulties, and, owing to the rainy season having set 
in, it was impossible to send a large army to assist them. 
Akbar followed his usual policy of striking a lightning blow 

* Briggs' translation, vol. ii, p. 237. 
482 



AKBAR AS RULER 

before the enemy had time to gather strength. Without losing 
a day he sent forward two thousand picked horsemen by forced 
marches to Patan, and himself followed immediately with his 
retinue mounted on camels and accompanied by led horses. 
At Patau his force mustered three thousand cavalry. He 
placed Mirza Abdurrahim, the son of his old guardian Bairam 
Khan, in command of the advance guard, and then pushed 
on towards Ahmadabad with such speed that the imperial 
war-drums were announcing the Padshah's approach to the 
astonished besiegers only nine days after he had left Agra — 
a distance of 450 miles. The Mirza could hardly believe his 
ears, for one of his spies had seen the Padshah in Agra fourteen 
days before, but as he found that Akbar had no elephants 
he resolved to give battle, and leaving 5000 horse to prevent 
the garrison joining the relieving force, he marched with 
7000 horse to the attack. Akbar, finding that the besieged 
garrison could give him no aid, had crossed the river and 
drawn up his troops on the plain. There were Moguls, Afghans, 
and Rajputs on both sides, but the morale of the imperial 
army was far superior. The rebels had no common interest 
to serve except the prospect of plunder ; the Padshah's men 
were inspired by devotion to their chief, and his personahty 
counted for much. After some desperate fighting the battle 
was decided by Akbar charging the enemy's flank with a 
hundred men of his body-guard. The Mirza fled, but was 
taken prisoner and handed over to the charge of the Raja of 
Bikanir. While Akbar, after the victory, was waiting for 
the arrival of the Governor of Gujerat he was suddenly attacked 
by a detachment of Gujeratis under the command of a local 
chieftain, but as soon as the imperial war-drum indicating the 
Padshah's presence was sounded they broke and fled in dis- 
order. Their commander fell in the pursuit, and in the turmoil 
caused by the fighting the Mirza Muhammad Husain was 
executed by the Raja of Bikanir 's orders, on his own responsi- 
bihty, to prevent his escape. Akbar, after this brilliantly 
successful campaign of about six weeks, returned to Fatehpur- 
Sikri and received in audience the general in command of the 

4B3 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

imperial forces in the Panjab, a son of Bairam Klian's sister, 
who had suppressed the rebel Mirzas' attempt in that province 
and brought back some of his prisoners tied up in raw cow- 
hides with their eyelids sewn together. Akbar immediately 
released them from this horrible torture, and even pardoned 
some of them. At the same time he rewarded the general's 
military services by conferring on him the title of Khan Jahan, 
and afterwards sent him back to the Panjab to assist one of 
the members of the imperial house in recovering possession of 
Badakshan. 

Akbar's next great military undertaking was the conquest 
of Bengal, which had continued under Afghan rule from the 
beginning of his reign, though, as in the case of Gujerat, the 
government was hopelessly weak and corrupt and the whole 
country was distracted by the various contending factions. 
Daud Khan, the nominal ruler, had acknowledged Akbar's 
suzerainty, but had neglected to pay the customary tribute, 
and had come into conflict with the imperial forces in Bihar. 
So in 1574 Akbar organized an expeditionary force, which, 
as was usual in campaigns in the lower Ganges valley, was 
assisted by an armed flotilla. He then proceeded, partly by 
land and partly by river, into the eastern part of Bihar, which 
was under Baud's government. After taking Hajipur and 
Patna he appointed Mun'im Khan, one of his former guardians, 
Governor of Bihar and commander-in-chief of the expeditionary 
force and returned himself to Fatehpur. 

Mun'im Khan was one of Humayun's Turkish adherents 
who had entered Akbar's service. He was deepl}'' implicated 
in the plot for the assassination of Atgah Khan, but had been 
pardoned by Akbar, who was always lenient in dealing with 
the riotous proceedings of his old associates if the}'' had proved 
themselves loyal and capable soldiers. After the revolt and 
death of Khan Zaman he had succeeded to the latter's jagir 
in Jaunpur, and had acted as the Padshah's military'' repre- 
sentative in Bihar as well as his diplomatic agent in the nego- 
tiations with the Afghans in Bengal. The second in command 
of the expedition was Raja Todar Mall, who had just before 

484 



AKBAR AS RULER 

been employed in settling revenue affairs in Gujerat and had 
also done military service in Bihar previously. On the approach 
of the Mogul army Daud retreated to the Hughli, and Mun'im 
Elhan pushed on to the Afghan capital, Gaur, and occupied 
Tandah, on the opposite side of the river. There he remained 
for some time to order the affairs of the conquered territory, but 
sent a detachment under the command of another of Humayun's 
old retainers, Muhammad Otili Khan Barlas, and Raja Todar 
Mall, to pursue the Afghans. 

For some time the Afghans had the advantage, owing to 
the difficulties of transport in the delta of the Ganges and 
their superior knowledge of the country. The Mogul army 
suffered seriously from sickness and was twice defeated in 
minor engagements. At Midnapur Muhammad Quli Khan 
died, and Raja Todar Mali was compelled to wait for the 
arrival of Mun'im Khan with reinforcements. The decisive 
battle took place at Takaroi, or Mughalmari, on the borders 
of Orissa. The Afghans, led by a distinguished chieftain, 
Gujar Khan, charged fu.riously with their elephants and threw 
the Mogul vanguard into confusion. Khan-i-'Alam, the general 
in command, was killed, and Mun'im Khan, who was an old 
man of eighty, was driven off the field after a hand-to-hand 
fight with the Afghan general. The day was saved by the 
steadiness of the Rajputs on the right wing under Todar Mall's 
command. " What does it matter," he cried when the news 
of the disaster reached him, " if Khan-i-'Alam is dead ? Why 
should we fear because the Klian Khanan has run away ? 
The empire is ours ! " With these words he animated his 
men and kept up the fight until Gujar Khan fell pierced by 
an arrow and the Afghans on both flanks were pressed back 
upon their centre. At the critical point Mun'im Khan 
succeeded in rallying his broken troops and returned to 
the attack. Daud Khan fled and the rout of the Afghans 
was complete. The Mogul forces under Raja Todar 
Mall then entered Orissa. Daud Khan shortly afterwards 
opened negotiations with the Mogul commander-in-chief, 
and a treaty was drawn up by which Bengal was ceded 

485 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

to the Mogul Empire, while Daud remained in possession of 
Orissa, 

The Khan Khanan, Mun'im Khan, whom Akbar appointed 
Viceroy in Bengal, returned to his headquarters at Tandah, 
but foolishly resolved to re-occupy Gaur, the old capital on 
the other side of the Ganges, which had been deserted on 
account of its unhealthiness. A violent epidemic of plague 
caused the death of a great many of the Mogul officers and 
played havoc with the troops, but the Viceroy, in spite of 
protests, refused to move. At last he himself was taken ill 
and died. Daud thought this was an opportunity for recovering 
his lost kingdom, and being joined by many Afghan chieftains, 
invaded Bengal with an army of fifty thousand horse. He had 
made considerable headway before Akbar recalled Khan Jahan 
Husain Qulifrom the Panjab and sent him with reinforcements 
to take supreme command of the Mogul army in Bengal. 
Raja Todar Mall remained as second in command. The new 
campaign ended with the final defeat and death of Daud 
and the extinction of Afghan rule in Bengal. 

Khan Jahan in 1577 sent Todar Mall, who had again dis- 
tinguished himself in the field, to the imperial court with 
some of the rich spoils of war, and in the following year Akbar 
sent the Raja again to Gujerat to attend to revenue affairs 
in that province. 

The Afghan landowners in Bengal continued to give much 
trouble after the death of Daud, for they were by no means 
content with finding themselves despoiled of their estates by 
the retainers of the Mogul Viceroy. Nor were the Mogul 
chieftains themselves disposed to render the imperial treasury 
its dues, and the pressure which Akbar brought to bear upon 
them subsequently led to a serious mutiny among the Mogul 
troops in Bengal. The Viceroy, Khan Jahan, set the example 
of amassing a huge fortune by indiscriminate plunder, and 
was, says Abul Fazl, on the verge of rebellion when he 
died a year after his appointment to the governorship of the 
province. 

Todar Mall was Akbar's right-hand man in revenue matters, 
486 



AKBAR AS RULER 

and lie served his master well. He was a man of strict integrity, 
and a most capable departmental chief. By his exertions the 
systematic plundering both of the treasury and of the ryots 
by the revenue officials was effectually checked. The ryots 
knew the limit of the Government's demands and were relieved 
from the gang of unscrupulous thieves who acted as agents 
for the Padshah ; the imperial treasury was filled to overflowing 
and Akbar's political plans were never hampered for lack of 
financial means. But the great fame which Todar Mall 
acquired on account of his revenue system must be considered 
more as a testimony of the people's gratitude for relief from the 
intolerable burden which had weighed upon them almost con- 
tinually from the first days of Muhammadan rule than as 
an acknowledgment of its intrinsic merits as financial legis- 
lation. Todar Mall was a hard man, and the fact that his 
scheme was only a development of Sher Shah's revenue system 
is sufficient to indicate how little the spirit of Indo-Aryan 
political economy entered into his financial reforms. But 
in this as in so many other matters Akbar's administration 
gathered lustre from the misdeeds of his predecessors, and 
Abul Fazl, hke other historians of the Mogtd period, has 
conveniently avoided comparison with the great days of 
Indo-Aryan rule. 

Akbar, no doubt, was sincerely anxious to deal fairly 
with the cultivators, whose industry provided the principal 
part of the revenue. He did away with a number of vexatious 
supplementary taxes and fees by which even Hindu rulers 
had often raised the total amount of the land-tax above the 
limit fijied by Indo-Aryan constitutional law. But Todar 
Mall's demand of one-third of the average produce was double 
the amount which Indo-Aryan political economists held to be 
justifiable in normal times, and even exceeded that which 
they allowed as an emergency measure when the safety of 
the State was seriously threatened. On the other hand, the 
condition of the country could not be considered normal. 
Akbar had a gigantic task to perform, and the people were 
happy to pay the price for a strong central government which 

487 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

could give them peace and prosperity and an honest admini- 
stration. 

Various regulations made by Akbar's Government were 
designed to obviate the hardships of a cut-and-dried revenue 
system. The taxes were fixed in money value, but every ryot 
was allowed to pay in kind if he thought the money rate was 
not fair, and if the assessment of his land seemed to him too 
high he had the right to insist upon the measurement and 
division of his crops. A rebate on the full demand was allowed 
in various cases, e.g. when the land had suffered from floods 
or had been out of cultivation for three years. The tax was 
remitted so long as the land lay fallow. The settlement was 
first made annually, but afterwards for a term of ten years, 
on the basis of the average payments for the preceding term. 
As Revenue Minister Todar Mall had the advantage of his 
experience as a Hindu landowner and thorough knowledgeof 
the ancient village traditions, so that his whole scheme as 
regards the measurement of land, classification of soils, and 
assessment could be expeditiously carried out with the goodwill 
of the villagers. Various improvements were made in the 
instruments of mensuration, and Todar Mall earned the lasting 
gratitude of the ryots for the relief of their former burdens 
which he effected. 

The most important innovation introduced by Todar Mall, 
says Professor Blochmann, was the change in the language and 
character used in the revenue accounts. " Formerly they 
had been kept in Hindi ^ by Hindu muhanirs. Todar Mall 
ordered that all Government accounts should henceforth be 
written in Persian. He thus forced his co-religionists to learn 
the court language of their rulers — a circumstance which may 
well be compared to the introduction of the English language 
in the courts of India. The study of Persian therefore became 
necessary for its pecuniary advantages. Todar Mall's order 
and Akbar's generous policy of allowing Hindus to compete 
for the highest honours , . . explain two facts : first, that 
before the end of the eighteenth century the Hindus had almost 

1 " In the vernaculars" would have been a more correct statement. 
488 



AKBAR AS RULER 

become tlie Persian teachers of the Muhammadans ; secondly, 
that a new dialect could arise in Upper India, the Urdu, which, 
without the Hindus as receiving medium, never could have 
been called into existence. Whether we attach more influence 
to Todar Mall's order or to Akbar's policy, which, once initiated, 
his successors, willing or not, had to follow, one fact should 
be borne in mind — that before the times of Akbar the Hindus, 
as a rule, did not study Persian, and stood therefore pohtically 
below their Muhammadan rulers." ^ 

Todar Mall's innovation, however, seems to have been 
designed more in the interests of the landlords than of the 
cultivators ; for the latter would certainly not have benefited 
by the use of a foreign language in the revenue accounts. It 
may be questioned whether the use of Persian as a court 
language was ever a serious obstacle to the political advance- 
ment of Hindus. The Persian language would be far easier 
for the educated Hindu than English ; and many Muham- 
I madan rulers before Akbar had employed Hindu ministers 
who were doubtless as proficient in Persian as any Indian 
Musalman. The Hindus had been teachers of the Muham- 
madans even before the latter entered India, and it was through 
the absorption of Indo-Aryan culture that Islam in India 
took the position it holds to-day among world-religions. Akbar 
was one of the great Musalman rulers who in promoting 
the cause of Islam helped also to purge Hinduism of 
many abuses and to break down sectarian intolerance on both 
sides. 

It was Todar Mall's strict integrity in financial matters as 
well as his ability as a general which made Akbar select him 
as his Vazir, and afterwards, in 1579, send him to suppress 
the disorders in Bengal which arose from the attempt to carry 
out his reforms in revenue administration. The landowners, 
both Afghan and Mogul, resented any interference with their 
prescriptive right of plundering the ryots and made common 
cause in resisting the introduction of a settled system of 
revenue-collection which both secured the due payment of 

1 Am-i-Akharl, vol. i, p. 352. 

489 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

imperial taxes and protected the cultivators from exactions. 
In 1583, when Todar Mall became Vakil, or Prime Minister, 
of the empire, Akbar sent his foster-brother, Mirza 'Aziz 
Kokah, the son of Atgah Khan, whose tragic death has 
already been recorded, to continue the difficult task of 
restoring order in Bengal. He succeeded partly by con- 
cessions to the landlords and partly by military measures 
in pacifying both the Afghan and Mogul rebels, but it was 
not until 1592, or eighteen 3^ears after the first expedition 
to Bengal, that Raja Man Singh brought the refractory 
zamindars to order and restored peace to the distracted 
province. 

In the meantime affairs in Rajputana and on the north-west 
frontier had engaged Akbar's attention. In 1576 the army of 
Ajmir fought a great battle with the Rana of Mewar, Partab 
Singh (or Rana Kika), at Gogunda. Partab Singh was the 
successor of Udai Singh. In the secure retreat of the fast- 
nesses of the Aravali hills to which the Rajputs of Mewar 
had retired after the fall of Chitor he had remained indifferent 
to the glamour of the Padshah's successes in the field, which 
brought even his own brothers to the imperial court, and 
treated with contempt Akbar's demand for the surrender of 
one of his State elephants as a token of submission. Akbar, 
whose success both as a war-lord and as an administrator was 
largely due to his unerring judgment in the selection of his 
officers, appointed Raja Man Singh to the chief command of 
the expedition sent to bring the proud Rana to reason, trusting 
to his proved capacity as a general and his exceptional know- 
ledge of the country and of Rajput tactics. Man Singh, 
according to the evidence of the Musalman historian Badauni, 
who took part in the battle, fully justified the Emperor's 
confidence, for when the Rana descended from the mountains 
and broke the vanguard of the imperial army in a furious charge 
it was only his fine generalship and the conspicuous courage of 
his Rajput bodyguard which turned defeat into victory and 
prevented a great disaster to the Mogul army. " That day," 
says Badauni, " through the generalship of Man Singh the 
490 



AKBAR AS RULER 

meaning of this line of Mulla Shiri became known : "A Hindu 
wields the sword of Islam." ^ 

Akbar, nevertheless, was not satisfied with the somewhat 
meagre result of the campaign — which was that the Rana, 
wounded in a hand-to-hand conflict with Man Singh, retreated 
to his mountain fortress, leaving his State elephant and other 
spoils in the possession of the Moguls — though Man Singh 
doubtless showed a wise discretion in not allowing his forces 
to be entangled in the recesses of the Aravali range. The 
imperial prestige, however, suffered somewhat by the privations 
endured by the troops after the victory from the scarcity of 
fodder and provisions in the plains of Mewar, and from Man 
Singh's refusal to allow the villages to be plundered according 
to the time-honoured Musalman tradition. A good deal of 
sickness resulted from over-indulgence in mango-fruit, which 
grew, says Badauni, in such abundance as to defy description. 
Akbar, after sending an emissary to investigate, recalled 
Man Singh, but the Rajputs of Mewar continued to defy all 
his efforts to subdue them. The Emperor, however, had little 
reason to be dissatisfied with the progress of his military plans, 
for the same year the campaign in Bengal was brought to a 
triumphant conclusion by the defeat and death of Daud, a 
success mainly due, as we have seen, to the ability of another 
Rajput general, Raja Todar Mall. 

^ Badauni, Lowe's translation, vol. ii, p. 239. 



491 



CHAPTER XVIII 

AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER OF 

ISLAM 

THE three years from 1576 to 1579 were comparatively 
tranquil, and Akbar was free to plunge himself deeply 
into the religious and metaphysical problems which 
had such an intense attraction for him. Abul Fazl was admitted 
into the inner circle of the court at Fatehpur, and the Thursday 
evening debates on religion and philosophy had begun. Up 
to this time Akbar, though he had maintained a tolerant attitude 
towards Hindu beliefs, which vv^as in itself offensive to the 
orthodox Musalman, had never wavered in the strict perform- 
ance of his religious du.ties according to the Muslim faith. He 
had been most assiduous in visiting the shrines of Musalman 
saints, and had treated with the utmost reverence the living 
shaikhs who had won a reputation for sanctit5^ The Great 
Mosque and college of Fatehpur had been founded in honour 
of Shaikh Salim Chishti ; Akbar's eldest son. Sultan Salim, 
had been born in his house and named after him. The Sultan 
Daniyal, a younger son of the imperial house, had Hkewise 
been named after another shaikh of great renown at Ajmir 
to whom the Padshah frequently paid his respects. Akbar 
had encouraged his Musalman subjects to visit the holy shrines 
of Islam at Mekka, and had assisted all who wished to do so 
from the imperial treasury. He continued to do this even after 
the proclamation which made him the supreme authority in 
spiritual matters for all his subjects. In fact, though he 
subsequently took a different attitude towards this and many 
other of the outward forms and ceremonies of Islam, whicli he 
rejected as superfluous or misleading in the same spirit as 
492 



AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER 

Protestantism rejected the ritual of the Church of Rome, not 
even his worst enemy, Badauni, accuses him of disputing the 
authority of the Quran, though he says that others spoke 
contemptuously of it. 

Akbar, indeed, was a true son of the Renaissance who 
claimed the right of interpreting the Musalman scriptures 
in the light of the scientific knowledge of his time. He would 
accept no dogmatic teaching which could not justify itself 
philosophically, or was in conflict with the known laws of 
nature. " Discourses in philosophy have such a charm for 
me," he said, " that they distract me from all else, and I 
forcibly restrain myself from listening to them lest the necessary 
duties of the hour should be neglected." ^ But he was far 
from being a rationalist who denied the truth of divine revela- 
tion. It is true that he insisted on the necessity of considering 
all dogmas in the light of human intelligence. ' ' The superiority 
of man," he said, " rests on the jewel of reason. It is meet 
that he should labour in its burnishing, and turn not from its 
instruction. A man is the disciple of his own reason. If it 
has naturally a good lustre, it becomes itself his direction, and 
if it gains it under the direction of a higher mind it is still his 
guide." 2 But at the same time, he said, the intellect will not, 
with the full assent of ' reason,' confessedly oppose " the 
divine law." " When man habituated himself to preserve the 
sacred relationship between the Supreme Being and himself, 
the bond of Divine love upon which the very existence of 
humanity depended kept the rational soul in close contact with 
God — and he who is spiritually illumined knows that none 
can effectually oppose His commands." These are not the 
sentiments of a rationalist, but rather those of a mystic who, 
penetrating beneath the surface of dogmatic teaching, saw 
that Islam in its inspirational depths came from the unf athomed 
source of Divine wisdom from which the rishis of India had 
drunk ages before the Hegira ; and now that the millennium 
of Islam was approaching he felt that the time had come 

1 Ain-i-Akbavt, Jarrett's translation, vol. iii, p. 386. 
3 lUd., p. -383. 

493 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

when all earnest Muslims should seek a means of reconciliation 
with their Hindu brethren. 

Some of Akbar's experiments for testing the foundation of 
religious belief would seem crude to the modern scientist — 
as when he ordered that twenty infants, whom their mothers 
had agreed to part with for a consideration, should be put 
into a secluded house far from human habitation in charge 
of nurses with strict instructions that they should never hear 
a word spoken — the object being to ascertain whether they 
showed any natural tendency towards one form of religion 
or another. The painful result was that many of the infants 
died from neglect, and others after three or four years remained 
dumb.^ But Akbar was neither ignorant, as Badauni declared, 
nor shallow in his religious beliefs. The Shaikh Mubarak and 
his two sons, who were his chief Musalman advisers, were 
renowned for their thorough scholarship ; Akbar himself was 
indefatigable in his studies. He sought counsel from the most 
learned men of his age and availed himself of every source of 
information on religious matters, as Badauni himself shows : 
" Crowds of learned men from all nations, and sages of various 
religions and sects, came to the court and were honoured with 
private conversations. After inquiries and investigations, 
which were their only business and occupation day and night, 
they would talk about profound points of science, the subtleties 
of revelation, the curiosities of history, and the wonders of 
nature." ^ 

But though Akbar was thus deeply imbued with the spirit 
of Indo-Aryan culture, it seems to be an entire misconception 
of his religious attitude to believe that he ceased to profess 
Islam, though one of his ' happy sayings,' as translated by 
Colonel Jarrett,^ would make it appear that he ultimately did 

1 Badauni, Lowe's translation, vol. ii, p. 296. 

2 Ibid., p. 263. 

' Ain-i-Akban, vol. iii, p. 384. The question is discussed by Mr Vincent 
Smith and others in the Asiatic Review, July and August 19 15. The correct 
translation, given by Mr Yusuf Ali, is as follows : " Formerly I used to force 
men into my way of thinking, and such a [proselyte] I looked upon as a 
Musalman. As knowledge grew I was filled with shame. [For any one] not 

494 



AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER 

so. He was a reformer, finding food in all religions, who 
endeavoured to place Islam on a broader foundation and 
make it a universal religion, tlius fulfilling the prophecy attri- 
buted to Muhammad, which in Akbar's time caused so much 
excitement among Muslims, that at the millennium of the 
Hegira a new Prophet, the Imam Mahdi, would " fill the world 
with justice " and lead all men to Islam. Naturally he satisfied 
none of his courtiers except a few devoted adherents, and 
aroused the bitter hostility of all narrow sectarians who were 
so convinced of the absolute superiority of their own particular 
dogmas that they were opposed to all inquiry into the deeper 
truths of religion. To the Jesuit priests of Goa, though he 
treated them with the greatest consideration and listened 
most attentively to their arguments, his mind remained an 
enigma — " so close and self-contained, with twists of words and 
deeds, so divergent one from the other, and at most times so 
contradictory, that even by much seeking one could not find 
the clue to his thoughts." His leanings towards Christianity 
disgusted the orthodox Musalman, like Badauni. The orthodox 
Hindu, like the Raja Bhagwan Das, though perfectly willing 
to do homage to him as Vishnu's Vicegerent on earth, refused 
to recognize him as a guru or exponent of Aryan religion. 

Raja Man Singh, when pressed by the Emperor to become 
a member of the new Sangha which was to embrace all sects 

being a Musalman to draw others into that [path] was not fitting. What they 
are forced to accept, how can it be called religion ? " Mr Vincent Smith 
makes this, as it seems to be at first sight, an open acknowledgment of 
Akbar's secession from Islam. But though the argument is rather ambiguous 
in form, Akbar is clearly referring throughout to his earlier years, when 
Mr Vincent Smith himself allows that he was a sincere and zealous Miisalman. 
It cannot therefore possibly be construed as Colonel Jarrett and Mr Vincent 
Smith would have it. The argument seems rather to be that Akbar as he 
advanced in years and knowledge had understood the true spirit of Islam 
better than to force others to profess it against their conscience. Mr Vincent 
Smith supports his contention by Father Monserrate's report of a conversation 
he had with the Padshah in 1582 ; but such evidence is worth little in the 
absence of Akbar's acknowledgment that the conversation was correctly 
reported. The Jesuit Fathers were eager to claim Akbar as a convert, 
and would be prone to exaggerate any expression of his opinions indicating a 
dissent from Musalman orthodoxy. 

495 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

and creeds, replied : " If your Majesty means by the term of 
membership willingness to sacrifice one's life, I have given 
pretty clear proofs and your Majesty might dispense with 
examining me ; but if the term has another meaning and refers 
to religion, surely I am a Hindu. And if I am to become a 
Muhammadan your Majesty ought to say so — but besides 
Hinduism and Islam I know of no other reHgion." 

To the Sunnis, who took the traditional law of Islam as a 
divine revelation and clung to the literal interpretation of it 
given by the 'Ulamas, the spirit of inquiry which animated 
Akbar was in itself, as Badauni said, " opposed to every 
Mushm principle." The Padshah was to them a backslider 
and a heretic who had renounced the creed of his fathers, a 
pure rationalist who impiously doubted the truth of divine 
revelation. The chief spokesman of the vSunni faction, the 
Mukdum-ul-Mulk — " learned in law and austere in practice," 
who " zealously persecuted heretics " and was the inveterate 
enemy of Shaikh Mubarak and his sons — ^became Akbar's pet 
aversion and the butt of Birbal's jests in the philosophical 
debates. He nevertheless joined with the Shaikh, Faizi, 
Abul Fazl, and others in signing the famous document which 
declared that the Padshah was " a most just, a most wise, and 
a most God-fearing King," and made him, on the authority 
of the Quran, the final arbiter in questions affecting Islamic 
doctrine. A few months afterwards Akbar sent him on a 
pilgrimage to Mekka to get rid of him, and on his return he 
was banished from the court ; but the story that Akbar 
had him assassinated was doubtless one of the many malignant 
inventions fabricated by the Padshah's enemies. 

The events of these three most interesting years in Alcbar's 
reign are recorded, from the Sunni point of view, in Badauni's 
histor3^ When the Debating Hall, the Ibadat-Khana, which 
Akbar ordered to be built at Fatehpur was finished in 1575, 
" the questions of Sufism, scientific discussions, inquiries intc 
philosophy and law, were the order of the day." Akbar spen1| 
much of his time in company with the disciples of the saint oJ 
Ajmir, to whose tomb he made annual pilgrimages^ discussing 
496 



AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER 

the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet. At the very 
commencement of the debates disputes arose on questions of 
precedence, and Akbar had to intervene and order that the 
amirs should sit on the east side, the Sa3ryids on the west, 
the 'Ulamas on the south, and the shaikhs on the north. The 
learned doctors of Islam, unaccustomed to defend their tenets 
in Hindu fashion with the weapons of logic instead of with 
the sword, were far from pleased with this revival of a time- 
honoured institution of Aryavarta, and the debates often 
degenerated into unseemly wrangles. " One night the vein 
of the neck of the 'Ulama of the age swelled up," says Badauni, 
" and a horrid noise and confusion ensued." The Emperor 
interposed and threatened to send away any 'Ulama who talked 
nonsense or misbehaved himself. It was this incident which 
provoked Badauni's whispered comment, " If I were to carry 
out that order most of the 'Ulamas would have to leave " — 
a thrust at his fellow-Sunnis which diverted the Emperor 
greatly. 

Akbar would call upon the Mukdum-ul-Mulk, as the chief 
representative of the orthodox party, and put up Abul Fazl, 
then a new arrival at court, to argue with him. One can 
imagine that the young scholar was delighted with the oppor- 
tunity of baiting his father's persecutor in open court, while 
the robust, active-minded Emperor watched the combatants 
with his penetrating eyes, listening attentively and enjoying 
the intellectual treat with as much zest as he did his favourite 
sport, an elephant fight. Akbar did not disguise his sympathy 
for the younger of the two disputants, for, says Badauni, 
" His Majesty used to interrupt the Moulana at every state- 
ment, and at a hint from him his companions also would inter- 
fere with interjections and observations, and would tell queer 
stories about the Moulana, and exemplified in his person the 
verse of the Quran, ' And some of you shall have life prolonged 
to a miserable old age.' " The MukdUm-ul-Mulk was not a 
popular person among Akbar's intimates. He had been a 
great power at court in the reign of Islam Shah, when he had 
been instrumental in bringing about the death of the Shaikh 

2 1 497 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

'Alai. In the early years of Akbar's reign he had set the 
Padshah's mind against Shaikh Mubarak and nearly succeeded 
in procuring his execution as a heretic. But now his star was 
on the wane, for Akbar had begun to understand the littleness 
of his mind and the meanness of his character, and took a 
mischievous pleasure in exposing him to ridicule. ' ' Stories were 
told one after another about his meanness and shabbiness, 
and baseness and worldliness, and oppression, all which vices 
were exhibited towards holy and deserving men, especially 
those of the Panjab, and which one by one came to Ught, 
verifying the saying, ' There is a day when secrets shall be 
disclosed.' " Akbar's method of dealing with the hoary old 
hypocrite was very characteristic. Though he was willing 
to condone many faults in the rough veteran soldiers who were 
the associates of his boyhood, he hated meanness and deceit. 
The Padshah himself was no saint, and he could be terrible 
when his Tartar blood was roused ; but none of his narrow- 
minded critics doubted the sincerity of his nature and his 
intense desire to arrive at the truth. He was a keen observer 
and an excellent judge of character : these debates gave him 
an admirable opportunity of noting the qualifications and 
worth of the men gathered round his throne. 

At the beginning the discussions turned chiefly on points of 
Muhammadan law and the doctrines of the many different 
sects of Islam. Akbar ordered some of the 'Ulamas to wTite 
a commentary on the Quran, but this, sa3''S Badauni, " led to 
great rows among them." Then some Portuguese priests 
appeared at court. He questioned them closely upon the 
philosophical basis of Christian doctrine, and seemed to be 
much impressed, for he requested the authorities at Goa to 
send him experts to give further instruction. The hopes of 
the Portuguese ran high at the prospect of winning so desirable 
a convert, and in 1580 they sent a mission, headed by Father 
Rodolfo Aquaviva, which was received most graciousl}^ by 
the Padshah and accorded permission to build a chapel at 
Agra. One of the priests was employed to assist in the trans- 
lation of Greek literature into Persian. Faizi was ordered to 
498 



AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER 

prepare a Persian translation of the Gospels ; tiie court painters 
copied many of the sacred pictures, in which Akbar showed 
much interest. Akbar, personall}'', disappointed the expecta- 
tions of the good Fathers. The Padshah would join reverently 
in divine service at the Christian church ; but his attitude was 
that of an impartial scientific inquirer. He would try the 
effect of Christianit}^ upon the unbiased mind of the young, 
and ordered his son. Prince Murad, a child of eight years, to 
be instructed in the Christian doctrine. He must have noticed 
the inconsistency between the Christian principles taught by 
the priests and the conduct of the Portuguese Christians at 
Goa, and the experiment with his own son was by no means 
convincing. Prince Murad, like both of his brothers, grew 
up a confirmed drunkard, and eventually died of delirium 
tremens at the age of twenty-eight. The second mission sent 
from Goa in 1590 convinced the Jesuits that Akbar's mind 
was inscrutable, though he still remained most friendly disposed 
towards them and liked to have some of them always near him. 
In the meanwhile Akbar was pursuing his inquiries with 
unabated zeal, hearing the arguments of vSufi and vShiah divines, 
listening to disputes between Brahmans, Buddhists, Musalmans, 
Parsis, Jews, and Christians, and adding to his library Persian 
translations of important works on philosophy, science, history, 
and religion. Among Sanskrit works which were thus trans- 
lated were the Atharva Veda, the Mahdhhdrata and Ram ay ana, 
the Harivamsa, Kalhana's History of Kashmir, the Lilawati, or 
treatise on arithmetic, by Bhaskaracharya, and other works 
on mathematics and astronomy. Akbar personally supervised 
the translation of the Mahabharata, and the court painters 
were kept busy in making illustrations for the Hindu epics, 
as well as for the masterpieces of Persian and Arabic literature. 
The imperial librarians brought the Emperor daily the books 
which they had translated and read them to him from begin- 
ning to end. " At whatever page the readers daily stop His 
Majesty makes with his own pen a sign, according to the 
number of the pages, and rewards the readers with presents 
of cash, either in gold or silver, according to the number of 

499 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

leaves read out by them. . . . He does not get tired of hearing 
a book over again, but hstens to the reading of it with more 
interest." ^ In this way Akbar, who had a prodigious memory, 
trained himself to take the part of arbitrator in the court 
debates held in the Diwan-i-am or in the Ibadat-Khana, 
which were of absorbing interest for him. He also began to 
plunge into the intricacies of Hindu philosophy and ritual and 
into the mysteries of occult science. " A Brahman, named 
Debi, who was one of the interpreters of the Mahabharata, 
was pulled up the wall of the castle [at Agra] sitting on a 
chdrpdi till he arrived near a balcony which the Emperor had 
made his bedchamber. Whilst thus suspended he instructed 
His Majesty in the secrets and legends of Hinduism, in the 
manner of worshipping idols, the fire, the sun and stars, and 
of revering the chief gods of these unbelievers, such as Brahma, 
Mahadev, Bishn, Kishn, Ram, and Mahama. . . . He became 
especially firmly convinced of the doctrine of the transmigra- 
tion of souls, and he much approved of the saying, ' There is 
no religion in which the doctrine of Transmigration has not a 
firm hold.' " ^ He was initiated into the secrets of Sanskrit 
mantrams and the practice of Yoga, and began to study the 
ancient superstition called alchemy, now made respectable 
under the name of synthetic chemistry. Akbar, no doubt, 
from his inexperience, was often imposed upon by the many 
yogis and fakirs he consulted, though he had a short way of 
dealing with charlatans when they were exposed. At one 
time a certain fakir at I^ahore made a sensation by pretending 
to disappear as he was performing the customary ablutions 
in the river at the time of evening prayer, and simultaneously 
making his voice heard, apparently on the opposite side of 
the river, shouting to the person to whom he had just been 
talking. Akbar, being greatly interested in psychical research, 
sent for the man, took him to the bank of a river, either at 
Agra or I^ahore, and commanded him to exliibit his powers, 
at the same time promising him an immense reward if he 

^ Am-i-Akban, Blochinaun's translation, vol. i, p. 103. 
^ Badaiini; I,owe's translation, vol. ii, p. 265. 

500 



AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER 

could demonstrate a real miracle. The Emperor, no doubt, 
had taken his precautions against fraud, for the man was 
dumbfounded and made no answer. " Very well," said Akbar, 
" then we will bind you hand and foot and throw you from 
the top of the fort. If you come out of the water safe and 
sound, well and good ; if not, you will have gone to hell." 
The miserable fakir then confessed that for the sake of filling 
his " hell of a stomach " he had played a simple trick. He had 
an accomplice, his son living on the city side of the river, 
who imitated his father's voice when the latter momentarily 
hid himself under the water on the other side.^ 

The numerous disputants of rival creeds who crowded 
Akbar's court soon found out that a practical test was the 
best way of convincing the Kmperor of the wonder-working 
powers which each one claimed for his own religion. At one 
of the conferences on religion which Akbar had arranged a 
passionate discussion rose to white heat between the Christian 
priests and Muhammadan mullas on the question of the divine 
inspiration of the New Testament and the Quran. The mullas 
became abusive, so that Akbar interposed, reproving them 
for their violence, and wound up the debate by an expression 
of his own opinion, which was the same as that stated in his 
' happy sayings,' namely, that God should be worshipped 
through the intellect and not by a blind adherence to the 
supposed revelations of Scripture. One of the contending 
parties in the excitement of the moment shouted, " I^et us 
make a peat fire, and in the presence of His Majesty we will 
pass through it, and whichever gets safely through will thereby 
prove the truth of his religion." Abul Fazl declares that the 
proposal came from the Christian " Padre Radulf [Rodolfo]," 
and that after Akbar had given permission the mullas refused 
to face the ordeal. Badauni, on the other hand, puts the 
challenge in the mouth of the Shaikh Outb-ud-din, and says 
that the priests declined to accept it. The records of the 
Jesuit Fathers support this version of the story, which prima 
\ facie is more credible. The practice of going through fire as 

^ Badauni, I<owe's translation, vol, ii, pp. 378-379. 

501 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

a test of faith is still current in India, and an Indian initiated 
into the secret of doing so without serious injury to himself 
would be more likely to make the proposal than an educated 
European of that time, for in the sixteenth century the age 
of miracles was already past in Europe. 

Akbar gradually began to show a decided preference towards 
Hindu observances in matters of religious ritual and court 
ceremonial, though he continued to assert himself as the 
exponent of a new intellectual movement in Islam. His 
standpoint that religious faith must always be tested by the 
intellect, rather than by dogmatic statements put forward as 
divine revelation, was certainly a reflection of Hindu thought 
expressed in the ordinance that every prayer addressed to the 
Divine Spirit must be preceded by an invocation to Ganesha, 
the iconic symbol of Reason. The Vishnu pillar upon which 
his throne was placed in the Diwan-i-Khas at Fatehpur was 
also an appeal to the ancient Vaishnava tradition which made 
the monarch God's representative on earth. The theory 
propounded by Akbar, that " a special grace proceeds from 
the sun in favour of kings, and for this reason they pray [to 
it] and consider it a worship of the Almighty," was likewise 
borrowed from the traditions of Rajput royalty. He did not, 
however, by any means conform to the fundamental principle 
of Hindu polity, by which the sovereign's supremacy was 
always subject to the constitutional laws of Aryavarta — 
assumed to be one with the divine Vedas. Akbar's imperious 
will could brook no restraints upon his prerogatives except 
those which were self-imposed, and he maintained in principle 
and practice the autocratic traditions of Islam. From the 
day he assumed control of the government his will was law. 
He, and he alone, was the interpreter of God's will. " If I 
could but find any one capable of governing the kingdom I 
would at once place this burden upon his shoulders and mth- 
draw therefrom. ... It was the effect of the grace of God 
that I found no capable minister, otherwise people would have 
considered that my measures had been devised by them." ^ 

1 Ain-i-Akban, Jarrett's translation, vol. iii, p. 387. 
502 



AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER 

It was natural in a man of Akbar's temperament that he 
should eventually tire of listening to the din of wordy warfare 
which resounded in the audience halls of Fatehpur from morn 
to night without any prospect of a final reconciliation between 
the contending parties. As the discussions in the court debates 
gradually involved the fundamental principles of religion and 
the bases of Islamic belief were examined, the 'Ulamas became 
more and more violent in abuse of each other and of those 
who differed from them, and the differences between the 
reforming party of Islam, headed by the Shaikh Mubarak and 
his sons, and orthodox Musalmans appeared more hopelessly 
irreconcilable. The climax was reached about the end of 
1578, when Abul Fazl in the Ibadat-Khana put forward for 
discussion the proposition that the king should be regarded 
by his subjects not only as a temporal ruler but as a spiritual 
guide. Even the Sunni 'Ulamas might have agreed to it 
without demur if they had had no doubts of Akbar's orthodoxy. 
An Indian sultan, de facto if not de jure, often had a position 
analogous to that of the Khalif. It was his will, and not 
that of the 'Ulamas, which decided which of the seventy-two 
sects of Islam should be predominant in the State. A court 
mulla could easily assent to the formula that the king, as head 
of the Church, should be the arbitrator when the 'Ulamas 
disagreed on points of doctrine. But Abul Fazl's opponents 
knew too well the Padshah's personal sympathies not to 
realize that their acceptance of the proposal meant the final 
triumph of Shaikh Mubarak's revolutionary propaganda. It 
therefore came as a bomb in the Sunni camp : prolonged and 
stormy discussions took place without any agreement being 
reached. While the dispute was at its height Akbar took a 
bold step which made any further opposition by the mullas 
an open defiance of his authority. He resolved to come 
forward publicly in the imperial mosque as the leader of Islam 
in India. Accordingly at the first Friday service of the month 
of Jumada'l-awwal in 1579 he took the place of the court imam 
and commenced to read the Eliutba before the assembled 
court, to signify that henceforward the Padshah would be 

503 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the spiritual as well as the temporal head of the Empire of 
Hindustan, The Khutba ended, he began to recite a poem 
composed by Faizi to celebrate the solemn occasion : 

The lyord Who gave to us command, 
Gave us wisdom, heart and strength, 
Who guided us in law and right 
And turned our mind from unjust ways, 
Who can describe His power and state ? 
Allahu Akbar — God is great. 

But before he had finished the third verse Akbar was overcome 
by emotion, and, descending from the pulpit, he left the rest 
of the service to the court khatih. 

There were precedents, says Badauni, for this proceeding 
in Mogul history, for Timur and other Mogul monarchs had 
Hkewise read the IChutba in the J ami' Masjid. But there 
was no mistaking the significance of this occasion. The 
opposition to Abul Fazl's proposal collapsed, and soon after- 
wards a State document was issued under the signatures and 
seals of the Mukdum-ul-Mulk, "of Shaikh Mubarak, the 
deepest writer of the age," " of Ghazi Khan of Badakshan, 
who stood unrivalled in the various sciences," and other 
great authorities on Islamic law, which gave legal sanction 
to the Padshah's assumption of the position of final arbiter 
in all matters of dispute regarding religious questions, and 
declared that his decisions should be binding both upon the 
'Ulamas and on all subjects of the empire. The text of the 
document was as follows : 

" Whereas Hindustan has now become the centre of security 
and peace, and the land of justice and beneficence, a large 
number of people, especially learned men and lawyers, have 
immigrated and chosen this country for their home. Now we, 
the principal 'Ulamas, who are not only well versed in the 
several departments of the I^aw and in the principles of juris- 
prudence, and well acquainted with the edicts which rest on 
reason or testimony, but are also known for our piety and 
honest intentions, have duly considered the deep meaning, 
first, of the verse of the Quran [Sur. IV, 62], ' Obey God, 
504 



AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER 

and obey the Propliet, and those who have authority among 
you/ and secondly, of the genuine tradition, ' Surely the 
man who is dearest to God on the day of judgment is the 
Imam-i-'Adil : whosoever obeys the Amir, obeys Me ; and 
whosoever rebels against him, rebels against Me,' and thirdly, 
of several other proofs based on reasoning or testimony ; 
and we have agreed that the rank of Sultan-i-'Adil [a 
just ruler] is higher in the eyes of God than the rank of a 
Mujtaliid [an infalhble authority]. Further, we declare that 
the King of the Islam, Amir of the Faithful, Shadow of God in 
the world, Abul Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar Padshah 
GhazT — ^whose kingdom God perpetuate — is a most just, a 
most wise, and a most God-fearing king. Should, therefore, 
in future a religious question come up regarding which the 
opinions of the Mujtahids are at variance, and His Majesty, 
in his penetrating understanding and clear wisdom, be inclined 
to adopt, for the benefit of the nation and as a political expe- 
dient, any of the conflicting opinions which exist on that 
point, and issue a decree to that effect, we do hereby agree 
that such a decree shall be binding on us and on the whole 
nation. 

" Further we declare that, should His Majesty think fit to 
issue a new order, we and the nation shall likewise be bound 
by it, provided always that such order be not only in 
accordance with some verse of the Quran, but also of real 
benefit to the nation ; and further, that any opposition on 
the part of his subjects to such an order passed by His 
Majesty shall involve damnation in the world to come, and 
loss of property and religious privileges in this.^ 

" This document has been written with honest intentions, 
for the glory of God and the propagation of Islam, and is signed 
by us, the principal 'Ulamas and lawyers, in the month of 
Rajab of the year 987 " (September 1579).^ 

^ This damnatory clause may be considered as wholly opposed to Akbar' s 
tolerant views in religious matters ; it was probably used as a common legal 
formula and not intended to be taken literally. 

2 Badauni, I,owe's translation, vol, ii, pp. 279-280. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

This famous document was drafted by Shaikh Mubarak, and 
Badauni declares that all but he signed it unwillingly, apparently 
for fear of losing the Padshah's favour — a curious comment 
on their " honest intentions." But Badauni's testimony in 
all religious questions is suspect : he was a bitter, disappointed 
man who, while accepting the hospitality of the Shaikh and 
his sons, was writing his secret history in which he vented his 
malice against his hosts, although they continued to show 
him the greatest kindness and often used their influence to 
protect him from Akbar's displeasure. 

About the same time as Akbar thus formally assumed the 
spiritual leadership of Islam he took into his own hands the 
administration of the department of Crown domains, which 
included the granting of say ur gals or madali ma' ash ^ — lands 
given by the Crown as benevolences. They were distinguished 
from jdgirs or tuyul lands, which were estates granted, in 
return for military service, for the maintenance of officers and 
their retainers. The former were held to be gifts, remaining 
in the possession of the owner and his descendants in perpetuo ; 
the latter were only conferred on the officers (mausabdars) 
so long as they held the king's commission, in lieu of salary. 

We have seen already that according to Indo- Aryan constitu- 
tional law the Crown domains were considered as the monarch's 
share of communal lands, assigned by the Aryan community 
to their ruler in return for the services he rendered as Protector 
of the State. The sayurgal lands, under the Muliammadan 
regime, corresponded to the grants given from the Crown 
domains as rewards to Brahmans or other men of learning, 
the court poets, master-builders and artists, etc., whom the 
king delighted to honour — grants given, as a rule, without 
religious prejudice, though the king often discriminated in 
favour of his own special cult. The jagirs corresponded to the 
estates held by Kshatriya or Rajput chieftains as fiefs bestowed 
by the Crown, and liable to be resumed at the pleasure of their 
overlord. On purely religious grounds it was comparatively 
easy for Muhammadan rulers to come to an understanding 

^ 'Assistance of livelihood.' 
506 



AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER 

with their Hindu subjects. On the land question there was 
an irreconcilable difference which could only be fought out 
to the bitter end vi et armis. Islam refused to recognize 
the rights of the Aryan freeman so long as he remained an 
unbeliever. Theoretically his lands, money, jewels, and every- 
thing he possessed — even his own person and those of his wife 
and family — were at the king's disposal for the benefit of the 
faithful. If the Commander of the Faithful or his represen- 
tative suffered them to live or to retain their hereditary posses- 
sions it was only for the convenience of the elect. In practice, 
of course, even the most bigoted of Musalman monarchs found 
it convenient to allow their Hindu subjects of the agricultural 
classes to remain in undisturbed possession of their lands, 
as long as they paid the jizya and other special taxes on infidels, 
and did not resist the king's ofiicers. But by the wholesale 
destruction of monasteries and temples and the massacre of 
monks and priests the soldiers of Islam not only secured a 
vast amount of booty in the form of gold, silver, and jewels; 
but enormously increased the extent of ownerless land at 
the disposal of the Crown, for many of the original proprietors 
who escaped massacre or slavery were turned adrift to earn 
a subsistence either as religious mendicants or as revenue- 
collectors for the Musalman. 

The administration of the Crown domains, so far as concerns 
the sayurgals, under Muhammadan rule was in charge of the 
Qadi-i-Jahan, the highest law officer of the Crown, who 
possessed an almost unlimited authority of conferring such 
lands independently of the king. He was also the highest 
ecclesiastical law officer, and often exercised the powers of a 
High Inquisitor.^ The office of ^adi-i-Jahan had been held 
for many years before the events above recorded by the Shaikh 
Abdunnabi, one of the signatories to the document, whose 
name is often mentioned in the accounts of the court debates. 
Many years before he had conspired with the Mukdum-ul- 
Mulk to bring about the death of Shaikh Mubarak, and as a 
leader of the Sunni faction he could be trusted to see that no 

^ Atn-i-Akbari, Blochmann's translation, vol. i, pp. 270-271. 

507 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

sayurgals were ever bestowed upon any but orthodox Musal- 
mans, Akbar had appointed him, trusting to his honesty, 
when he discovered that the whole department was a hot- 
bed of bribery and corruption, and Abdunnabi had been 
instrumental in bringing back to the Crown a great many of 
the sayurgals which had been so lavishly distributed by Sher 
Shah among his Afghan clansmen and retainers. The imperial 
revenue, however, did not benefit much on account of the 
Shaikh's prodigality in the redistribution of the sayurgals — 
and his favours were not bestowed disinterestedly. He 
lavished upon his proteges, says Badauni, " whole worlds of 
subsistence allowances, lands and pensions, so much so that 
if you place the grants of all former kings of Hindustan on one 
scale and those of the Shaikh on the other, his scale would 
weigh more." " But," he adds regretfully, " several years 
later the scale went up, as it had been under former kings, and 
matters took an adverse turn." The reason was that rumours 
eventually reached Akbar's ears of what went on in the depart- 
ment. In 1578 he got rid of Abdunnabi, and at the same time 
put an end to the disgraceful scenes which often took place 
in the court debates by packing off both the Shaikli and the 
Mukdum-ul-Mulk — now sworn enemies — to Mekka in charge 
of the pilgrims from Hindustan. Akbar was skilful in making 
the punishment fit the crime, for the custodians of the holy 
places at Mekka were notorious for their unscrupulous fleecing 
of pilgrims. According to Blochmann there was a proverb 
current in the East, " The Devil dwells in Mekka and Medina." ^ 
Akbar then appointed Khwaja Sultan as ^adi, but took the 
administration of the department into his own hands by 
ordering that all those who held more than five hundred 
bighahs of land should bring their farmans to court for inspec- 
tion, or in default forfeit their sayurgals. The whole depart- 
ment was vigorously overhauled by Abul Fazl with a view to 
a more impartial distribution of State bounty and a general 
cleansing of this Augean stable. It may be believed that the 
wails of the faithful who had thus to render an account of their 

^ Translation of Am-i-Akbarl, vol. i, p. 273 n. 
508 



AKBAR AS SPIRITUAL LEADER 

possessions went up to heaven. Badauni gives a pitiful 
account of the sufferings endured by the famihes of the " great 
and noble and the renowned and famous " who lost respect ; 
of the schools and mosques which were closed for lack of 
endowments ; how " science and scientific men fell in estima- 
tion"; and, worst of all, how lands were given to "men of 
no renown, to low fellows, even to Hindus." 

The Oazis, the subordinates of the ^adi in the provinces, 
raised the cry of ' Islam in danger,' and one of them, the Qazi 
of Jaunpur, soon after Akbar's reading of the Khutba in the 
mosque of Fatehpur, issued a fatwa insisting on the duty of 
rebelling against the Padshah. The Afghan zamindars, always 
ready to respond to such a call, took up arms. Akbar's 
brother, Mirza Hakim, the ruler of Kabul, seized the oppor- 
tunity to march into the Panjab and lay siege to Lahore. 
Akbar sent his foster-brother, the Elhan-i-'Azam, though he 
was by no means in sympathy with the Padshah's religious 
ideas, to suppress the rebellion in Jaunpur, and himself took 
the field against Hakim. The Mirza was compelled to retreat, 
and Akbar entered Kabul without opposition. Hakim was 
pursued to the mountains and then begged forgiveness. Akbar 
readily granted it and restored him to his kingdom. He died 
in 1585, when Akbar removed his court from Fatehpur to 
Lahore, which place remained his headquarters for thirteen 
years. 

As already mentioned, peace was not fully restored in 
Bihar and Bengal until 1592. In the meantime Nathu or 
Muzaffar Shah, the late ruler of Gujerat, another of the 
recipients of Akbar's generosity, again made himself the tool 
of the Padshah's bitter enemies. Together with a number of his 
old associates he raised a rebellion, and marched to Ahmadabad, 
which he took without much difl&culty, together with the con- 
tents of the imperial treasury. With this and other booty 
he was enabled to raise an army of forty thousand men, which 
compelled the Mogul forces to retire to Patau. Akbar imme- 
diately sent Abdurrahim, the son of Bairam Khan, with 
reinforcements to take supreme command. He proved worthy 

509 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

of his father's reputation, for with only ten thousand cavalry he 
attacked Muzaffar Shah at Sarkij, near Ahmadabad, forced 
the enemy back to the city, and drove them through it with 
great slaughter. He afterwards defeated the ex-Sultan a 
second time near Nadot. For these victories Akbar made him 
governor of the province and raised his position in the army 
to the same as his father had held — -that of a Khan EZhanan, 
a title equivalent to that of Field-Marshal. Muzaffar Shah's 
rebellion was by no means ended by these defeats. He fled 
to the hill tracts of Gujerat, and with the assistance of various 
chieftains continued to make constant raids into the province. 
It was many years before order was restored in that part of 
the empire. 



510 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE DIN-ILAHi 

AKBAR'S attention to spiritual affairs was not for a 
moment diverted by these and other commotions in 
different parts of his empire, or by the reforms he 
initiated in departmental matters. The formal debates in 
the Ibadat-Khana came to an end soon after the principal 
'Ulamas had accepted the Padshah's spiritual authority, but 
the religious excitement, which was general at the time and 
by no means confined to court circles, continued to be a most 
important factor in politics. Indeed Akbar's assumption of 
the leadership of Islam must be considered not only as a means 
of curbing the arrogant temper of the 'Ulamas, but as an act 
of far-seeing statesmanship intended to ensure the peace of 
Hindustan and the security of the Mogul dynasty. Politics 
and religion in India had always been inseparable. No ruler 
had succeeded or could succeed in establishing a perfect 
political equilibrium in India by the sword alone. 

The psychic atmosphere of Hinduism was still electric with 
the religious fervour excited by Chaitanya's mission, thirty 
years before Akbar's time, and the near approach of the 
millennium continued to agitate the mind of Islam. Akbar's 
fine political intuition must have told him that if the head of 
the State refused to take the lead and guide the empire through 
this critical period there would certainly not be wanting 
religious fanatics to disturb the minds of his subjects and 
possibly create a storm beyond his power to control. He 
Jiad sought for and failed to find a man of light and leading 
who would fully satisfy his own craving for spiritual enlighten- 
ment and command the entire confidence of the people. It 
was not, therefore, mere vanity which prompted him at last 

5" 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

to listen to the suggestions made by his courtiers — some 
prompted by mean motives and others by sincere admiration 
for the brilHant gifts of their high-minded sovereign — that he 
was " the ^ahib-i-Zaman who would remove all differences 
of opinion among the seventy-two sects of the Islam and the 
Hindus," ^ Outside the court, also, many prophecies were 
quoted which in the popular imagination pointed to the 
Padshah as the promised Mahdi. 

Akbar proceeded cautiously and with a scrupulous regard 
for Indian tradition in his plans for adapting the doctrine of 
Islam to the spirit of the age. For establishing his authority 
on an unshakable foundation it was necessary, above all 
things, to appeal to the religious sense of the people. He began 
to feel his way by using in public the formula " There is no 
God but Allah and Akbar is His Khalifa " as a summary of 
the teaching of the new Islam. This was in reality an adapta- 
tion of the Vaishnava doctrine which made the king, as 
Protector of the people, the representative of God on earth. 
Finding, however, that it created dissatisfaction among orthodox 
Musalmans, Akbar revived an Indo- Aryan tradition, sanctified 
by pious associations of thousands of years, and founded a 
new Order, or Sangha, open to all Indians, called the Din-Ilalii, 
or Divine Faith, with that formula as its password. It was a 
royal Order similar to that which Marco Polo noted in the 
courts of South Indian kings in the thirteenth century ; the 
badge of the Order was the Padshah's portrait, which the 
members wore on the top of their turbans. The bhakti which 
was to be the inspiration of its members was whole-hearted 
devotion to the State, represented by the sovereign. 

As in the Sangha of the Buddha, there were four paths,^ 
or four degrees, within the Order. The bhaktas of the first 
degree were those who were ready to sacrifice to the Padshah 
all their worldly goods ; those of the second degree must be 

1 Badaunl, I^ovve's translation, vol. ii, p. 295. 

2 In the Buddhist Order the four paths were : (i) that of the Stream- 
Attainer ; (2) of the Once-Returuer ; (3) of the Never-Retumer ; and (4) 
of Arahantship. See Buddhism, Mrs Rhys Davids, p. 173. 

512 



THE DIN-ILAHI 

prepared to sacrifice their life in his service ; those of the 
third were expected to entrust their honour to his keeping ; 
and those of the fourth and highest degree were to accept the 
Padshah's rehgious views as their own.^ All the courtiers, 
says Badauni, became novitiates of the Order ; but apparently 
few attained to the highest degree. Some, indeed, resolutely 
refused to accept Akbar's guidance in religious matters and 
continued to repeat their accustomed forms of prayer even 
in the presence of the Padshah, after a special religious ritual 
had been prescribed for the court. It is greatly to Akbar's 
credit that though he often tried to influence his most valued 
officials by argument, he always respected the 'conscientious 
objector ' and never used his authority tyrannically to compel 
anyone to accept membership of his Order. Akbar frequently 
banished from his dominions any shaikhs, mullas, fakirs, 
and others whom he considered to be dangerous to the State, 
but never on account of their religious behefs. 

Badauni attacks the Din-Ilahi violently as an organization 
intended for the subversion of the creed of the Prophet, and 
treats all of Akbar's ritualistic innovations as clear proofs of 
his apostasy. But certainly Akbar himself did not intend it 
as such, nor was it so regarded by the learned and pious 
Musalmans who were his chief advisers. The latter accepted 
it not as a ' new rehgion,' but as a religious brotherhood for 
uniting the seventy-two sects of Islam and Indians of other 
beliefs in the common aim of serving the State and securing 
!the spiritual and temporal advantage of Hindustan in the new 
era which was about to commence. There was the Prophet's 
own authority for assuming that the millennium would usher 
jin a new dispensation which would continue his own mission 
to mankind and establish it on a broader basis. When, there- 
fore, Akbar was armed with full powers by the 'Ulamas he 

^ In all probability the five-storied pavilion at Patebpur-Sikri, known as 
bhe Panch Mahall, and planned after the ancient Indian pyramidal monastic 
Assembly halls, was the chapter-house of the Order. ,The domed pavilion 
jn the top would be the place where Akbar, as Grand ^Master 'of the ^rder, 
;ook his seat, and the four lower stories must have been the assembly halls 
»f the members divided according to their degrees. 

2K SI3 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

could with perfect consistency introduce the ritualistic reforms 
he thought most fitting for inaugurating the new era in 
accordance with the Prophet's revelation. But as in all 
creeds there are many who cling to time-honoured forms and 
ceremonies as the essential part of religion, so there were 
many staunch Musalmans, like Badauni, who were horrified 
at any proposal for revising the established ritual of Islam. 
When Akbar regulated divine worship by the sim and used 
fire and light as symbols of divine power the orthodox railed 
at him as a Parsi or Hindu unbeliever, regardless of the fact 
that Islam itself, like every other creed, fixed its festivals and 
religious observances by the same means. When he enjoined 
members of the Order to abstain from eating meat, to be 
content with one wife — except she should be barren — and 
allowed Musalman youth to consider for themselves the pro- 
priety of the rite of circumcision, he also gave mortal offence 
to the narrow-minded sectarian. 

In 1582, which corresponded to the tenth year before the 
Muhammadan millennium, Akbar, with his usual far-seeing 
political instinct resolved to anticipate matters by formally 
inaugurating the new era. A decree was then issued fixing 
the commencement of the Ilahi era at the 3'^ear of the Padshah's 
accession to the throne,^ and ordering that this reckoning 
should be stamped on the imperial coinage and used in all 
official documents. The Arabic computation of time, dating 
from the flight of the Prophet, was changed for a solar year, 
divided into months named after those of ancient Persia, and 
the court festivals were rearranged after the same system. 
State patronage was no longer to be given to the old-fashioned 
Arabic learning, but the study of philosophy, astronomy, 
medicine, mathematics, poetry, history, and imaginative 
literature was to be encouraged. At the same time Akbar 
showed respect for the founder of the MusHm faith by ordering 
that a Tdnkh-i Alfi, or a history of the thousand 3?-ears from the 

' This was in strict accordance with Indian tradition, for the principal 
Hindu eras had also been fixed from the year of the consecration of those 
kings who had won the name of a Chakra-vartin, or universal monarch. 



I 



THE DIN-ILAHI 

death of the Prophet, should be prepared by the imperial 
librarians. In accordance with the traditions of Islam, he 
also appointed a Privy Council of forty members, corresponding 
to the Chihil tandn, the forty true Musalmans who by God's 
grace were always to exist on earth as representatives of the 
Prophet. In the same year two of the grandees of the court 
returned from the pilgrimage to Mekka bringing with them a 
huge stone, so heavy that a very strong elephant was required 
to transport it, which was believed to show the imprint of the 
Prophet's foot. In deference to the feelings of his Musalman 
subjects, Akbar went out to meet it with his whole court, and 
by the Padshah's command the amirs took turns in carrying 
it a few steps on the v/ay to the capital. 

Various changes now made by Akbar in court ceremonial 
and in the ritual of divine service were by no means pleasing 
to Musalmans of the old school. Nor were they more gratified 
by Akbar's endeavours to remove the disabilities and to 
lighten the burdens which former Musalman rulers had imposed 
upon the Hindus. In the previous year Akbar had abolished 
a munber of vexatious tolls and customs which produced so 
large a revenue that " no king," it was said, " would have 
remitted them without divine guidance." ^ Raja Todar Mall 
was now appointed Diwdn and entrusted with the great work 
of reforming the administration of land revenue throughout 
the empire. Abul Fazl makes clear in one sentence the whole 
difference between Sher Shah's and Akbar's land policy : 
" The raiyats were to be so treated that they should be willing 
to make their payments to the treasury voluntarily." ^ The 
Raja did his duty honestly and well as a member of the Din- 
Ilahi. " Careful to keep himself free from all selfish ambition, 
he devoted himself to the service of the State and earned an 
everlasting fame. He devoted his skill and powerful mind to 
simpHfying the laws of the State, and he allowed no grasping 
and intriguing men to obtain any influence over him." ^ Musal- 

' Elliot, vol. V, p. 414. 

' Akbar-ndma; the twenty-seventh year of the reign — revenue regulations. 

« Ibid, 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

mans were made to respect the religious susceptibilities of 
their Hindu brethren by an ordinance forbidding the eating 
of beef. At the same time Akbar prohibited Hindu customs 
which were injurious or immoral, such as early marriages and 
compulsory sati. 

The essence of the Din-Ilahi was contained in this high- 
minded and unflinching devotion to the common weal wliich 
Akbar himself showed in the highest degree, and expected 
from those who were admitted to membership of his Order. 
In this sense the ' new religion,' though it may have numbered 
few thoroughly sincere devotees among the Musalman and 
Hindu aristocrac)^, made a profound and lasting impression 
upon the masses. Thousands flocked to the polo-ground of 
Fatehpur to receive the bounty which Akbar, according to a 
time-honoured custom of Indian royalty, lavished upon the 
poor without distinction of caste or creed. When the Padshah 
appeared at the Jaroka window of the palace every morning to say 
his prayers and show himself to his subjects, crowds of Hindus 
assembled determined to begin the day auspiciously with the 
sight of Vishnu's Vicegerent on earth. In the evening, Badauni 
adds sneeringly, " there was a regular court assembly of needy 
Hindus and Musalmans, all sorts of people, men and women, 
healthy and sick, a queer gathering and a most terrible crowd." 
And when Akbar, says his devoted friend Abul Fazl, left his 
palace " to settle the affairs of a province, to conquer a kingdom, 
or to enjoy the pleasures of the chase, there is not a hamlet, a 
town, or a city that does not send forth crowds of men and 
women with vow-offerings in their hands and prayers on their Ups, 
touching the ground with their foreheads, praising the efficacy 
of their vows, or proclaiming the accounts of the spiritual 
assistance received. Other multitudes ask for lasting bliss, 
for an upright heart, for advice how best to act for strength 
of the body, for the birth of a son." In short, the Indian 
people, with their deep religious sense, willingly assented to 
the doctrine that " a most just, a most wise, and a most God- 
fearing King " was fit to be the spiritual leader of his subjects 
and were eager to be enrolled in the Order of the Din-Ilahi. 
5i6 



THE DIN-ILAHI 

As a political institution the Din-Ilahi entirely fulfilled 
Akbar's hopes. It stirred the imagination of the Indian 
masses so deeply that Akbar bequeathed to his descendants a 
legacy of devoted loyalty to his dynasty incomparably richer 
than any Musalman ruler before him had given to his suc- 
cessors. But historians, both Indian and European, have 
made a profound mistake in adopting Badauni's prejudiced 
view of it as a ' new religion ' propagated by Akbar in opposi- 
tion to the fundamental doctrines of Islam. The religious 
principles of the Din-Ilahi only summed up those of the most 
cultured and enlightened Indian Musalmans of the sixteenth 
century ; but the mere fact that these principles made it 
possible for Musalmans and Hindus to worship God at the 
same shrine and with a common ritual was enough to condemn 
Akbar as a hopeless heretic in the eyes of the faithful who 
clung to the literal interpretation of the Sunna, the traditional 
law of Islam. Akbar's answer to the charge was characteristic. 
When the King of Turan, Abdulla Khan Uzbek, wrote to 
him regarding the reports he had heard of the Padshah's 
apostasy he replied : "Of God people have said that He had 
a son ; of the Prophet some have said that he was a sorcerer. 
Neither God nor the Prophet has escaped the slander of men 
— ^then how should I ? " ^ 

In the latter years of his reign, provoked by the implacable 
hostility of the Sunnis, Akbar showed an open contempt for 
their sectarian prejudices, which did much to strengthen the 
case against him from the standpoint of the orthodox Musal- 
man.^ But the best evidence that the Din-Ilahi was not what 
it was represented to be by Akbar's enemies lies in the fact 

^ Blochmann, Am-i-Akban, vol. i, p. 468. 

2 The conversion of Muhammadan mosques to secular uses was an instance 
which Akbar's enemies seized upon as justification for their reckless abuse. 
The orthodox Musalman chose to forget that it had been the settled policy 
of many former rulers to desecrate Hindu temples and convert them into 
mosques, often solely for the purpose of outraging the feelings of the Hindus. 
In Akbar's time there must have been thousands of such mosques in Hindustan 
rarely or never used for divine worship. To give them back to Hindus might 
have been regarded as an insult to Islam. Akbar adopted the wisest and 
justest course in adapting them for secular purposes. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

that its religious teaching, in spite of its popularity with the 
masses, failed to attract any considerable number of the 
higher classes of Hindus. The orthodox educated Hindu 
refused to accept Akbar as an exponent of the esoteric teaching 
of the Vedas, although the ritual of the Din-Ilahi was to a 
great extent borrowed from Hinduism. Of the eighteen 
principal members of the Order mentioned by Badauni all 
were Muhammadans except Raja Birbal, who belonged to an 
inferior class of Brahmans. Among them was Akbar's brilhant 
and accomjjlished foster-brother, ' Azam Khan Kokah, a staunch 
Musalman and a man of very independent character, who for 
a long time was opposed to Akbar's tolerant religious principles 
and boldly ridiculed both his sovereign and the Din-Ilahi. 
He even went so far as to make a demonstration of his dis- 
approval by absenting himself from court and disobeying 
Akbar's orders to return. But a pilgrimage to Mekka, where 
he suffered like others from the rapacity of the guardians 
of the holy places, altered considerably his views upon Musal- 
man orthodoxy, and immediately on his return to India he 
shocked Badauni by accepting Abul Fazl as his spiritual 
teacher, cut off his beard, joined the Order, and thenceforth 
took a prominent part in its social gatherings. 

Mr Vincent Smith ^ says that " the new creed was accepted 
by a few time-serving courtiers . . . but it never attained 
any real vogue, and probably was practically extinct even 
before Akbar's death." He, like other writers, entirely 
misunderstands the scope of the Din-Ilahi and its connec- 
tion with Indian traditions of pre-Muhammadan times. The 
political importance of the Order was far greater than he 
suggests — even though Akbar's graceless son, Jahangir, ignored 
it- — and his sweeping charge of insincerity against members of 
the Order, not excepting great men like Shaikh Mubarak, 
Faizi, and Abul Fazl, is without any historical justification. 
Akbar, though deeply absorbed in spiritual questions, was 
far more a statesman and empire-builder than a religious 
propagandist. He was a profound student of Indian liistory 

^ Asiatic Review, July 1915. 

S18 



THE DIN-ILAHI 

and made a direct appeal to the deepest feelings of his subjects 
by giving his Sangha a religious character, but his motives in 
founding the Din-Ilahi were political rather than religious. 
And neither the aims of the Order nor its place in the history 
of the period can be properly appreciated unless it is under- 
stood as one of the instruments by which Akbar tried to effect 
his purpose of consolidating the Mogul Empire by obliterating 
the sense of a foreign domination from the minds of his people 
and bringing the polity of Islam into line with that of the 
Aryan rulers of India. 

But it was Akbar's great administrative reforms, mostly 
introduced at the time of the founding of the Order or after- 
wards, and his earnest endeavour to live up to the Aryan ideal 
of " a most just, a most wise, and a most God-fearing King " 
which roused the enthusiasm of the people of Hindustan for 
the Din-Ilahi and made them, in Abul Fazl's words, " look 
upon their conversion to the New Faith as a means of obtaining 
every blessing." ^ The religious message of the Din-Ilahi was 
by no means a new one — not even for Musalmans, much less 
for Hindus. The startling innovation, denounced by Muham- 
madan orthodoxy as rank heresy and welcomed by Hindus 
as a divine revelation bringing blessings to all who received 
it, was that henceforth in Hindustan all political and social 
disqualifications on account of religious differences were to be 
swept away. Islam of the new era proclaimed that " divine 
grace is shed upon all alike " ^ and that no man should suffer 
on account of the way he chose for worshipping God. Regarded 
in this Ught the influence of the Din-Ilahi was far-reaching, 
and continued long after the dissolution of the Order upon 
Akbar's death. 

^ Aln-i-Akharl, Bloclimann, vol. i, p. 165. 

2 Ain-i-Akbari, Jarrett's translation, vol. iii. p. 381. 



519 



CHAPTER XX 

AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

IN 1585 Akbar drew closer the ties which united the 
Mogul dynasty with the Hindu aristocracy by marrying 
his eldest son, Prince Salim, or Sultan Jahangir, with 
the daughter of Raja Bhagwan Das. In the same year he 
found it expedient, upon the death of his brother, Mirza 
Hakim — who, as before stated, had been restored to the 
government of Kabul after the suppression of his rebellion 
in 1581 — to leave Fatehpur and make lyahore his capital, 
so that he might have a firmer grip upon the affairs of the 
north-west frontier. lyahore remained his headquarters until 
1598. In these thirteen years Akbar was actively engaged 
in directing the military operations necessary for maintaining 
the position he had assumed as a Chakra-vartin — ^the supreme 
war-lord of India. Since the days of Chandragupta Maurya 
it had been a fixed principle of Indo- Aryan polity that for the 
successful defence of Aryavarta from foreign aggression it was 
always expedient, if not absolutely necessary, to concentrate 
the strength of her Kshatriya defenders under the banner 
of a Chakra-vartin. History had repeatedly demonstrated the 
soundness of the theory and it had always been recognized as 
the ideal of Kshatriya statesmanship, but, unfortunately for 
India, the mutual jealousies of rival war-lords had made it 
difficult to maintain that principle in practice, and very few 
of the Aryan rulers of India had been able to reach to it. 

Since the Muhammadan invasion 'Ala-ud-din had been the 
exponent of the doctrine of Kultur and ' f rightfulness ' on the 
side of Islam who had come nearest to this position. Before 
Akbar there had been some Musalman monarchs of alien race, 
like Husain Shah of Jaunpur, who had discovered the secret 
520 



I 



AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

of wise, just, and God-fearing government which would make 
aHen domination wholly acceptable to the people of India ; 
but Husain Shah had been driven from his throne, and none 
of them had extended their poHtical powers so far as to claim 
the suzerainty of the ' Five Indies ' like Harsha. Outside the 
limits of the Mogul Empire Muhammadan government in India 
was now rotten to the core, with no prospect of amendment 
from inside. Akbar was therefore perfectly justified in con- 
sidering that he was consulting the interests both of the Mogul 
dynasty and of India herself in using his mihtary strength to 
restore order throughout Aryavarta, when milder measures 
were certainly inadequate. 

Akbar's first step was to secure his north-western frontier 
from an attack which threatened from the Uzbeks of Turan, 
under their ambitious ruler, Abdulla Khan, who had driven 
Mirza Siilaiman, a prince of the house of Timur, out of Badak- 
shan and now had his eyes on Kabul. As soon as this purpose 
was effected Akbar despatched one of the imperial armies 
under the command of Raja Bhagwan Das to undertake the 
conquest of Kashmir and another to punish the refractory- 
tribes in North-eastern Afghanistan. A third expedition was 
directed against the Baluchis, who had also given trouble. 
Kashmir had been under Musalman government since the 
fourteenth century, but the valley was now distracted by 
dynastic disputes. The cause of the unrest in the Swat country 
was an outburst of religious fanaticism. Early in Akbar's 
reign a Hindustani soldier had set himself up as a Mahdi, 
under the name of Raushenai, ' the Enlightened One,' and had 
won many enthusiastic followers among the Yusufzais and 
other Afghan tribes, especially on account of the doctrine 
that his faithful disciples were to be rewarded by the possession 
of all the lands and property of unbelievers — ^which in all 
ages and among all sects acts as a powerful stimulus to religious 
zeal. The Raushenais had given much trouble in previous 
years, until their prophets ventured to descend from the inacces- 
sible hilly regions and meet the Mogul forces in the plains. 
There the Afghan tribesmen met with severe punishment and 

521 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

were forced to retire to their native fastnesses. Their Mahdi 
died soon afterwards, but in spite of his faihire as a war-lord 
his reputation for sanctity survived his death. His remains 
were guarded as sacred reHcs, and his youngest son, upon 
whom the prophet's mantle had fallen, kept the flames of J 
religious fervour alive and the north-west frontier of India in i 
a perpetual state of ferment. 

The Baluchistan expedition was soon brought to a successful 
conclusion, but it was not until the middle of 1587 that the 
imperial armies, assisted by the internal disorders of the country, 
broke through the passes of Kashmir and made it a part of 
the Mogul Empire. Akbar visited Srinagar in the spring of 
the following year, but the state of Hindustan and his own 
energetic temperament did not permit him to indulge in the 
luxury of a periodical exodus to the hills, which Jahangir and 
Shah Jahan enjoyed in sumptuous ease. 

The Swat expedition was an even more difficult business, 
and involved the Mogul forces in serious reverses. As soon as 
the imperialist troops entered the Swat valley the Yusufzais, 
although they had ceased to believe in the divine inspiration 
of the pretended Mahdi, made common cause with the Rau- 
shenais and offered a desperate resistance to the invaders. 
Zain Khan, the Mogul general, defeated them in twenty-three 
fights, and established fortified posts to keep them in check ; 
but the constant activity of the wily enemy eventually 
exhausted his troops and he was compelled to ask for reinforce- 
ments. 

Akbar seems not to have realised the seriousness of the 
situation, for his judgment in the appointment of the two 
commanders of the relieving army was singularly at fault. 
He chose two of his favourite courtiers. Raja Birbal and 
Hakim Abul Fath, neither of whom had any special qualifica- 
tions or experience in military affairs, though at the Mogul 
court every man of rank was assumed to be a soldier. Raja 
Birbal was a poet and musician ; his sparkling wit and good- 
humour won him general popularity as well as the Padshah's 
favour. Abul Fath was an accomplished Musalman scholar 
522 



AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

and an expert on questions of religious doctrine who had held 
high administrative appointments. Unfortunately, they were 
not on good terms with each other, and as soon as the relieving 
force joined Zain Khan's command the three generals began 
to give the enemy the benefit of divided counsels by quarrelling 
vigorously- — a situation which must have seemed as humorous 
to the Afghan chieftains as one of Birbal's jests. The result of 
the campaign can be easily anticipated. Birbal, with the 
prestige of court favour at his back, succeeded in upsetting 
Zain Khan's careful and methodical plan of campaign in the 
vain belief that the agile tribesmen could be easily crushed 
by the superior strength and organisation of the Mogul war- 
machine. So long as the operations were confined to the 
open country all went well with the campaign. The Yusufzais 
were driven into the mountains and their villages and lands 
were laid waste. But directly the imperial troops, with their 
war-elephants and complicated supply service, attempted to 
force their way further into the difficult and dangerous moun- 
tains, where it was impossible to keep up communications, the 
tribesmen swarming on the heights above harassed them 
unceasingly. At last the imperialists began to be demoralised, 
and a retreat became necessary, which ended in a great cata- 
strophe. Raja Birbal in a night march was inveigled into an 
ambuscade in a narrow defile, where his troops were cut to 
pieces and he himself, with many other officers, was killed. 
Zain Khan made a gallant but hopeless attempt to keep the 
rest of his panic-stricken army together, but the Yusufzais 
gave him no chance, and it was with the greatest difficulty 
that he and Abul Fath escaped on foot to the fortress of 
Attock. 

Akbar was even more grieved by the loss of his favourite 
poet and jester than by the disaster to the imperial arms, 
and for a long time clung to the hope that he might still be 
alive, for the Raja's body was never found. Rumours reached 
the Padshah's ears that Birbal, being ashamed to reappear at 
court, was wandering about the hills in the disguise of a 
sannyasin. When this proved to be only village gossip a more 

523 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

circumstantial story became current of a barber who had 
been recognised as the missing Birbal by certain marks on his 
body. Akbar sent urgent orders to the collectors of the 
district that the barber should be brought to court at once. 
The officials, to satisfy the Padshah's demand and save them- 
selves further trouble, pretended that a criminal who had been 
condemned to death was the person sought for, and sent a 
report that he had died on the way to Lahore. Akbar went 
into mourning a second time, and severely punished the officials 
for neglect of duty in not having sent the man directly he 
was identified. But now, as in previous emergencies, he 
chose his two most trusted and experienced Rajput generals. 
Rajas Man Singh and Todar Mall, to retrieve the errors of 
the disastrous campaign. They soon succeeded in driving 
back the Yusufzais and in coming to an arrangement with 
them which enabled the imperial armies to deal with the 
Raushenais and their new Mahdi, Jalala, in the south and 
west of Kabul. By 1588, after much hard fighting, the north- 
west frontier of the empire was brought to a tolerable state of 
order by the decisive defeat of Jalala in the Khaibar Pass 
and the establishment of fortified posts which compelled the 
turbulent tribesmen to retire to their mountain fastnesses; 
but the Raushenais continued to be aggressive until the end 
of Akbar's reign and long afterwards. Man Singh was appointed 
to the governorship of Kabul, but as the Afghans M^ere dis- 
satisfied at a Hindu being placed over them, Akbar soon 
afterwards transferred him to Bengal and gave them a Musalman 
governor. 

Another campaign of two years' duration, from 1588 to 1590, 
directed by Mirza Abdurraliim, the son of Bairam Khan, 
ended with the conquest and annexation of Sind. The Khan- 
i-'Azam soon afterwards quelled a rebelhon in Gujerat and 
took possession of two more principalities, Kathiawar and 
Katch, in the name of the Padshah. In 1592 Raja Man 
Singh, in command of the imperial army in Bengal, added to 
the signal services he had rendered to the Mogul cause by the 
subjugation of Orissa. He was now the premier Hindu prince 
524 



AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

serving in the imperial army, for Akbar had lost two of his 
most able and devoted Rajjjut adherents, Rajas Bhagwan Das 
and Todar Mall, who died on the same day in 1589. The 
steadfast loyalty, conspicuous ability, and high character of 
these three Rajput chieftains had contributed more than 
anything else to the security of Akbar's throne and the 
contentment of the Indian people. 

The Padshah's authority now extended over an empire 
far greater than that of Harsha. With the exception of the 
Rana of Mewar's territory, which remained in the midst of 
the Mogul Empire as the last independent stronghold of Indo- 
Aryan royalty, he was undisputed master of the whole of the 
ancient Aryavarta from the Himalayas to the Narbada river, 
and was recognised by the vast majority of his Hindu subjects 
as fulfiUing their ideal of an Aryan monarch, although four 
centuries of Muhammadan rule and the considerable dilution 
of the Aryan element in the population had dimmed the 
memories of the golden days when Aryavarta was the most 
advanced in true culture and civilisation, the freest and richest 
of all countries in Asia or in Europe. The village communities 
and townships had indeed lost the political influence they 
possessed under Hindu rule ; the village elders were no longer 
addressed by State officials in terms of respect which belonged 
to royalty. But they were again left free in the management 
of local affairs ; the burden of oppressive taxation had been 
removed ; justice was impartially administered ; Hindus 
enjoyed exactly the same political and social rights as the 
ruling race, the Moguls, and as the native Musalmans. Almost 
half of the imperial armies was Hindu, ^ and individually every 
Hindu was as free as any of Akbar's subjects, for it was not a 
mere academic theory that the highest offices of State, military 
I and civil, were open to him — ^they were, in fact, usually occupied 
!by Indians and Hindus whose abilities commended them to 
'!the Padshah. The Din-Ilahi, moreover, was a bold attempt 
|on Akbar's part to give back to the people a share in the 
management of the spiritual affairs of the empire such as 

1 Bad^uni, I^owe's translation, vol, ii, p. 350. 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

they had when Harsha-Vardhana convoked the General 
Assembly of the Sangha at Kanauj to hsten to the arguments 
of the Master of the Law. 

Further than this in the path of constitutional reform no 
Musalman monarch, Indian or foreign, could have gone. It 
was, indeed, a signal proof of Akbar's extraordinary power 
as a statesman and of his influence in Islam that he could go 
so far without provoking a general revolt of his Musalman 
subjects. But Akbar owed much to the time in which he 
lived and the country in which he was born. It probably would 
have been impossible for him to have achieved so much in 
any earlier period of Muhammadan domination in India, or in 
any other country than India. From a Mogul and dynastic 
point of view the success of his policy was equally remarkable. 
The imperial army was not only a war-machine thoroughly 
well equipped and drilled to a high state of efficiency ; it was 
animated by the highest spirit of patriotism and recognised 
by the people as their own defence against misrule and foreign 
aggression — a political factor of incalculable importance for 
the future of the Mogul Empire. Though the burden of taxa- 
tion upon agriculture and trade had been greatly lightened, 
the imperial revenue had enormously increased and the 
treasuries were filled to overflowing. No other monarch in 
Asia or in Europe could command the wealth which Akbar 
had at his disposal for providing the sinews of war, and no 
other monarch was better served by his officers and men. 
And the insecurity, misery, and misrule which had been 
prevalent over the greater part of Hindustan at the beginning 
of Akbar's reign had given place to order, contentment, and 
prosperity in little more than thirty years. Akbar's system 
of civil administration was essentially bureaucratic, but no 
bureaucracy was ever more efficient both in promoting the 
welfare of the State and in reconciling the rulers with the 
ruled. His government was not only more efficient than 
that of any former Musalman ruler of India, but it was more 
permanent in its effects ; its excellent organisation maintained 
the solidity of the Mogul Empire long after his personal influence 
526 



AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

was gone— both in the stormy reign of the cynical and egotis- 
tical Jahangir, to whom the ethics of the Din-Ilahi were foolish- 
ness, and in that of Akbar's favourite grandchild, the prodigal 
grand seigneur Shah Jahan, when Hindustan again enjoyed a 
long unbroken peace. It was not until Aurangzib, the icono- 
clast, revived the narrow and intolerant political principles 
of Muhammadan orthodoxy and crushed underfoot the free 
institutions of Aryavarta which had survived the storms of 
centuries that the splendid fabric of Akbar's statesmanship 
began to fall into ruin— a ruin so complete that the Aryans of 
the West have hardly yet begun to recognise the handiwork 
of their forerunners in the East or to understand the soiurces 
whence Akbar drew his inspiration as a statesman. 

In 1594 Akbar further strengthened the defences of his 
empire on the north-west frontier by the recovery of the 
fortress of Kandahar, which had been held by the Shah of 
Persia since the beginning of his reign. He then continued 
to pursue the traditional policy of a Chakra-vartin by an 
endeavour to extend his sovereignty over the Dekhan, an aim 
which was only partly realised at the time of his death ten 
years later. The Dekhan, hke the rest of Musalman India 
at the time of Akbar's accession, was in a state of political 
chaos. Its history till the death of Ali 'Adil Shah of Bijapur 
in 1580 has been already told. The dynastic quarrels between 
Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, and other rival Muhammadan kingdoms 
■^•ere renewed directly the purpose of their temporary recon- 
ciliation—the destruction of the military power of Vijayanagar 
h-had been effected. In 1586 one of the claimants to the 
throne of Ahmadnagar, Burhan Nizam Shah, had appealed 
for Akbar's intervention on his behalf— his brother, Murtezza 
N'izam Shah, the actual king, having become unfit to reign 
3n account of insanity. The expedition which Akbar sent to 
;mpport him was, however, unsuccessful, and Burhan became 
I refugee at the Mogul court. Murtezza soon after attempted 
o murder his own son by setting fire to his bed, but the youth 
escaped and retaliated by murdering his father by a similar 
nethod. He inaugurated his succession to the throne by the 

527 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

wholesale murder of the surviving members of the royal 
family, but ten months later was himself imprisoned and put 
to death by his Prime Minister, after a reign of terror in which 
mob-law prevailed and the Indian Muhammadans made a 
general massacre of their foreign co-religionists. 

Burhan's son, Ismail Nizam Shah, was then put upon the 
throne, but two ^'■ears later the nobles of Ahmadnagar invited 
Burhan himself to take it, which he did with the help of an 
army sent from Bijapur, where his sister, Chand Bibi, Ali 
'Adil Shah's widow, had considerable influence. It was not 
long, however, before Burhan was at war with liis relative, 
Ibrahim 'Adil Shah II, the ruler of Bijapur, and in league 
with the Hindu Raja of Vijayanagar, Ramraj's brother and 
successor — a reversal of the situation which obtained some 
thirty years previously, when Ibrahim's uncle had allied 
himself with Ramraj to crush Ahmadnagar. Ibrahim, how- 
ever, with the help of his Mahratta cavalry, defeated the 
allied forces under the walls of Sholapur, and Burhan died 
soon afterwards, leaving the throne of Ahmadnagar to his 
-son Ibrahim Nizam Shah, born of an Abyssinian mother. 
After a reign of four months Ibrahim of Ahmadnagar was killed 
in battle, and the Abyssinians of the royal body-guard there- 
upon espoused the cause of his infant son, Bahadur Nizam 
Shah, and invited his great-aunt, Chand Bibi, to assume the 
regency during his minority. 

Chand Bibi, as has been told, was the daughter of Husain, 
the third king of the Nizam Shahi dynasty of Ahmadnagar, 
and consequently of Brahman descent. From the time of 
her marriage with Ali 'Adil Shah, as a part of the compact 
made by the Musalman dynasties of the Dekhan for the 
destruction of Vijayanagar, she had played a conspicuous part 
in the politics of Bijapur. She had acted as regent during 
the minority of her husband's nephew and successor, Ibrahim, 
a task which demanded the highest courage and diplomatic 
skill. At one time she was the ruling power in the State, at 
another confined in prison by the minister who opposed her. 
At last, in 1584, when Ibraium's sister was married to her 
528 



AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

nephew, the son of Murtezza Nizam Shah, she left BijapUr 
to reside at her brother's court — a change which by no means 
diminished the difhculties of her position. Eleven years later, 
when the Ab^^ssinians of the royal body-guard offered her the 
regency of Ahmadnagar, there were three competitors for the 
throne besides her own grand-nephew. The leader of one 
of the rival parties had written to Akbar's son, Prince Murad, 
then in command of the Mogul army in Gujerat, asking for 
his assistance. The Prince eagerly seized the opportunity, 
and, together with the Khan Klhanan, whom Akbar sent to 
assist him, marched to Ahmadnagar. But when the Mogul 
forces arrived under the walls of the fortress they found that 
the approach of the foreign interlopers — as the Moguls were 
still regarded in the Dekhan — ^had caused the majority of the 
contending factions to tmite under Chand Bibi in offering a 
desperate resistance to their entry into the city. 

Chand Bibi's gallant defence of Ahmadnagar has made her 
one of the heroines of Indian folk-lore in the Dekhan. She 
aroused the enthusiasm of the garrison and the admiration of 
the imperialists by appearing on the ramparts veiled but with 
sword in hand to encourage the defenders, recklessly exposing 
herself to the heavy fire of the enemy and directing the repair 
of the breaches made by the Mogul mines. At the same time 
she despatched messengers to call to her aid the forces of 
Bijapur and other states whose independence would be 
threatened by the success of the imperialists. Akbar, on the 
other hand, was badly served in this campaign by his son. 
Prince Murad, whom he trusted to uphold the prestige of the 
house of Timur. The Prince, though not lacking in courage, 
was a confirmed drunkard, hot-tempered and insolent towards 
the able and experienced general deputed by Akbar to advise 
him. After a siege of about four months the imperialists had 
made little headway and found themselves confronted by a for- 
midable confederation of the other Musalman kingdoms in the 
Dekhan. Prince Murad was therefore glad to accept Chand Bibi's 
offer to come to terms, by which Ahmadnagar retained its inde- 
pendence by surrendering its claims to the suzerainty of Berar. 

2L 529 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

Chand Bibi's troubles were not, however, ended. Soon after 
this great success the disloyalty of her Prime Minister and a 
dispute regarding the boundaries of Berar involved her in a 
fresh conflict with the Moguls, though she herself was most 
anxious to avoid it. This time the imperiahsts narrowly 
escaped a serious defeat by the united forces of the Dekhan, 
though the situation was saved by the courage and resource 
of the ELhan Khanan. Renewed disputes between the latter 
and Prince Murad, and the generally unsatisfactory state of 
affairs, induced Akbar in the beginning of 1598 to recall the 
Khan Khanan and send Abul Fazl into the Dekhan as High 
Commissioner to take general charge and send Prince Murad 
back to court, but the latter died of delirium tremens the day 
of Abul Fazl's arrival. Chand Bibi, finding herself in the 
clutches of a gang of unscrupulous intriguers, saw the policy 
of making the best terms possible with the Mogul power, and 
entered into negotiations with Abul Fazl. A treaty was 
signed ; but the Abyssinians and some of the Muhammadans 
of the Dekhan, resolved not to submit to Akbar's suzerainty, 
took the matter out of her hands, and the brave Sultana was 
murdered in her palace by a mob of soldiers excited by rumours 
that she was betraying them to the enemy. Ahmadnagar, after 
another siege of about six months, fell in 1601 to the assault 
of the imperial army under the command of Akbar's youngest 
son, Prince Daniyal. Chand Bibi's ward, Bahadur Nizam Shah, 
was taken prisoner and confined in the fortress of Gwalior. 

Akbar, meanwhile, acting on Abul Fazl's advice, had left 
I^ahore, and in order to be in close touch with the situation 
entered the Dekhan through the territories of his feudatory 
Bahadur Khan, the last of the Faruki dynasty of Khan- 
desh. The latter had only recently come to the throne, after 
having been imprisoned by his predecessor for thirty 3'ears 
— ^for it was the custom of the rulers of Khandesh to keep 
their nearest relatives under lock and key to guard against 
conspiracies. Bahadur was therefore totally ignorant of 
political affairs, and foolishly resolved to oppose the Mogul 
power, trusting to the impregnability of the famous fortress of 
530 



AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

Asirgarh, which experienced soldiers considered to be the 
strongest in Asia and perhaps in the whole world. The place, 
however, surrendered to Akbar after a siege of eleven months, 
mainly owing to a virulent epidemic which swept off a great 
part of the garrison and reduced the remnants to despair. 
Bahadur was sent to join his ally of Ahmadnagar in captivity 
at Gwalior and Khandesh was annexed to the Mogul Empire. 
The success of the Mogul arms induced the Sultans of Bijapur 
and Golconda to come to an understanding with Akbar, and a 
marriage was arranged between Prince Daniyal and a daughter 
of Ibrahim 'Adil Shah. In 1602 Akbar returned in triumph to 
Agra and assumed the title of Emperor of the Dekhan, leaving 
Abul Fazl in administrative charge. 

It was not, indeed, the success of the campaign in the Dekhan, 
but a serious situation which had arisen since his departure 
from Hindustan, which induced Akbar to return. lyike many 
other great men, Akbar was unfortunate in his children, none 
of whom inherited the high intellectual power and strong moral 
fibre of their father. The hordes of parasites and low adven- 
turers on the outskirts of the court — Akbar's secret enemies — 
were powerless against the Padshah himself, but took their 
revenge in debauching his children and in stimulating their 
headstrong tempers. Strong and wise as Akbar had proved 
himself to be in controlling the turbulence and unscrupulous- 
ness of his nobles, he had shown an indulgence bordering on 
weakness towards the misconduct of his children. The good 
counsellors whom Akbar appointed to guide them not infre- 
quently found themselves unsupported by the Padshah in 
checking the misbehaviour of their wards. Prince Salim, the 
eldest — now past any tutor's control, for he was over thirty 
years of age — ^was not only an habitual drunkard like his 
brothers, but had already made an exhibition of fiendish cruelty 
which Akbar would not have tolerated in any of his generals. 
He had an implacable hatred of the honest Abul Fazl, who 
had often risked annoying his sovereign by bringing Salim's 
misconduct to his notice. Akbar seemed to consider that 
any punishment inflicted upon the imperial princes would be 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

more damaging to the prestige of the dynasty than the disgrace 
they brought upon it themselves, and endeavoured to wean 
them from their vices by a father's loving counsel and to 
bring them to a higher sense of responsibihty by giving them 
a larger share in the administration of the empire. Before his 
departure from the Dekhan Akbar had formally nominated 
Prince Salim as his successor, made him Viceroy of Ajmir, 
with the redoubtable Raja Man Singh as his adviser, and 
entrusted him with the conduct of a new campaign against the 
Rana of Mewar. But as soon as fresh disturbances in Bengal 
called Man Singh back to his own viceroyalty Salim flung off 
all restraint and, thinking that the situation in the Dekhan 
gave him a fine opportunity, marched his army towards Agra 
with the bold intention of turning the Padshah off his throne. 
The governor of the fortress, however, shut the gates against 
him. Salim then marched off to Allahabad, and, having suc- 
ceeded in occup5dng the fortress and seizing the contents of 
the imperial treasury, publicly assumed the royal title. 

Akbar, as soon as the news reached him, acted with his usual 
promptitude and returned to Agra with a picked body of the 
imperial army ; but instead of taking the field against his 
disloyal son, as Salim no doubt expected, sent him an affec- 
tionate letter warning him against the consequences of con- 
tinued disloyalty, but promising forgiveness if he would at once 
return to his allegiance. vSalim thought it politic to send a 
submissive reply full of professions of filial devotion, but being 
informed by his spies that the main body of the imperial army 
was still in the Dekhan, he marched to meet the Padshah at the 
head of a considerable force wliich he had collected. Akbar 
then sent a stern letter ordering him either to come to court 
with a small retinue or to return at once to Allahabad. Salim 
reluctantly accepted the former alternative and a reconciHation 
took place. Akbar, hoping to keep him out of further mischief, 
granted him the provinces of Bengal and Orissa. At the same 
time the Padshah wrote a full account of what had happened 
to his faithful henchman, Abul Fazl, and ordered him to return 
to court, where his presence was urgentl}^ required. 



AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

Salim, who was well informed by his spies, fearing that 
Abul Fazl's influence with his father might diminish his pros- 
pects of succession to the throne, resolved to get rid of him, 
and wrote to one of his cronies, Bir Singh, Raja of Urchah, 
asking him to waylay and kill Kazl when he passed through 
the Raja's territories — ^the route he would most likely choose 
as the most direct. Abul Fazl was warned of his danger, 
yet, with his touching faith in the virtue of the Padshah's 
protection, could not be persuaded either to choose a safer 
way or to provide himself with a strong escort, but pressed 
forward with all speed on his journey to Agra accompanied only 
by a few trusty retainers. He disdained to fly when the Raja 
with his myrmidons came in sight, and died bravely defending 
himself to the last, a truly loyal member of the Din-Ilahi. 

Salim's exultation when he received from Bir Singh the 
head of his hated enemy was great. For Akbar the loss of 
his devoted friend was a cruel blow. For several days he gave 
himself up to uncontrolled grief, refusing food and seeing no one. 
" If Salim wished to be Emperor he might have killed me and 
spared Abul Fazl," were his words when at last the whole 
story was told to him. He then gave peremptory orders for 
the punishment of the assassin, Bir Singh, and a strong force 
was immediately sent to bring him to court alive or dead. 

, The Raja, after several fights, was driven into the jungles, 
and evaded capture until Akbar's death, when he reappeared 
and was handsomely rewarded by Jahangir, who made no 
attempt to conceal his own share in the murder. But not even 
this atrocious outrage provoked the Padshah to take steps for 
the punishment of Salim. He only continued to use his utmost 

.efforts to conciliate his son's violent and hateful temper. 

I Akbar's modern biographers have held this to be a great 
blot on his character, without due consideration of all the 
circumstances. The standard of political ethics which Akbar 
and intimate friends sought to maintain was far above the 
average of the ruling class to which they belonged. The 
majorit^^ of that class regarded Salim not as a murderer, but 
as a very acute and successful diplomatist — a judgment which 

533 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

would be upheld by the text-books of a certain modern school 
of diplomacy. Akbar, who was now sixty years of age, had 
suffered periodically from an internal disorder, and the loss of 
so many of his dearest friends and staunchest supporters 
might well have affected his usual buoyant spirits and resolute 
courage. Most of the great men who had helped him in 
securing the foundations of the Mogul Empire — Shaikh Mubarak, 
Faizi/ Abul Fazl, Todar Mall, and Bhagwan Das — had already 
gone. Akbar was more than ever alone. Of his three sur- 
viving sons, Murad had died ; his brother Daniyal was rapidly 
drinking himself to death. Salim, in spite of his debauchery 
and savage temper, was a strong man who could count upon 
powerful support in the imperial army. If the Padshah had pro- 
ceeded to use military force against him he might have provoked 
a conflict which would have plunged the whole empire into 
confusion, shattered the entire fabric he had so laboriously built 
up, and opened the gates once more to India's foreign aggressors. 

The only potential candidate for the succession whose repu- 
tation stood higher than Salim's was the Prince's youngest son, 
Elhurram, who eventually succeeded his father under the title 
of Shah Jahan and did ^ much as a ruler to justify his grand- 
father's good opinion of him. Raja Man Singh, Salim's 
brother-in-law, and now the most powerful of Akbar's Hindu 
nobles, was in favour of the nomination of his nephew by 
marriage. Prince Khusru — Khurram's eldest brother. A 
violent feud ah"eady existed between the latter and his father, 
and Akbar seemed unwilling to do anything to widen the 
breach. Under all the circumstances he probably showed the 
wisest statesmanship in continuing to recognize Salim's heredi- 
tary right to the throne according to the traditions of the 
house of Timur, though plenty of precedents might have been 
found in Indo- Aryan constitutional law for setting him aside. 

Akbar only lived about three years after the death of Abul 

1 Paizi died seven years before the murder of Abul Fazl. Even Badauni 
draws a pathetic picture of Akbar hurrying -with, the court hakims to the 
bedside of the dying poet, gently lifting up his liead, and joining in Abul Fazl's 
grief when he found that the end had come. 

534 



AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

Fazl in 1602, but persisted to the end in his endeavours to 
control his incorrigible son. Knowing that Salim was amenable 
to womanly influence (under the spell of Nur Jahan he later 
on developed some sense of regal responsibility), the Padshah 
sent the Sultana Salima, Bairam Khan's widow and now one 
of Akbar's wives, who according to an Indian custom had 
adopted Salim as her son after the death of his own mother, 
to reason with him — the result being that he appeared again 
at court in a chastened mood. Akbar received him kindly, 
gave him permission to use the imperial insignia, and sent him 
back to Rajputana to renew the campaign against the Rana 
of Mewar — for the Rajputs of Mewar some years previously 
had emerged from their etreats in the Aravali hills and had 
gradually won back a great deal of lost ground. But the 
Prince conducted himself so badly as a general in the field 
that Akbar recalled him and sent him back to Allahabad. 
There his continued drunkenness and the violent scenes which 
took place between himself and his equalty intemperate son, 
Khusru, so affected the mind of Khusru's mother that she 
took poison and died. In a fit of repentance Salim reappeared 
at Akbar's court and submitted to being put under medical 
treatment for a time ; but the quarrels between the Prince 
and his eldest son, who did his best to inflame Akbar's mind 
against his father, again became a public scandal. 

That these domestic troubles weighed heavily upon Akbar 
and hastened his end there can be no doubt. It is unprofit- 
able to speculate what xAkbar might have done if he had lived 
longer and Salim's outrageous conduct had continued. But 
the Padshah knew well that the only alternatives to the course 
he actually took were to put his son to death or imprison 
him for fife, and these were alternatives which he could 
never bring himself to take, for in spite of all he loved his son, 
and under ' Shaikhu Baba's ' ^ violent temperament there were 
hidden some of the fine qualities of Babur's stock. 

In the beginning of 1605 another blow fell upon Akbar — - 

1 The pet name which Akbar gave Salim, after his foster-father, the Shaikh 
Salim Chishti. 

535 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 

the arrival of news from the Dekhan that Prince Daniyal 
had died in a fit of dehrium tremens before his marriage with 
the Princess of Bijapur had been consummated. Salim was 
now his only surviving son. In the middle of September the 
Padshah was taken seriously ill, and the administration of the 
empire was left in the hands of his foster-brother, the Khan-i- 
'Azam, and Raja Man Singh, both of whom would have welcomed 
the sUghtest word from their sovereign in favour of the nomina- 
tion of Prince Khusru as his successor. But as his end drew 
near the Padshah called Salim to his bedside and, in the 
presence of all the nobles, signified his dying wish that he 
should gird on the sword of Humayun and take the imperial 
turban on his head. Akbar passed away on October 15, 1605, 
having just entered his sixty-fourth year, and Salim succeeded 
without serious opposition from any side under the title of 
Jahangir, ' the World-conqueror.' 

Akbar was biuied with great pomp at Sikandra in a splendid 
mausoleum, which he himself had commenced some time 
before his death, strikingly different from those of his prede- 
cessors, for it was planned, like the Panch Mahall at Fatehpur, 
on the lines of the five-storied pyramidal pavilions which were 
the meeting-places of the Buddhist Sangha and other rehgious 
orders. It seems as if Akbar had intended it as the central 
assembly hall of the Din-Ilahi, but Jahangir, who posed as an 
orthodox Musalman and pretended to consider his father as 
a wanderer from the fold of Islam who repented on liis death- 
bed, altered the design of the top story so as to make it more 
conventionally Mushm, a desecration which accounts for its 
curiously truncated appearance. 

Akbar has shared the fate of all great reformers in having 
his personal character unjustly assailed, his motives impugned, 
and his actions distorted, upon evidence which hardly bears 
judicial examination. Thus some attribute his death to the 
opium habit, ^ bringing forward a statement of one of the 
Jesuit Fathers that the Padshah was reprehensibly drowsy 
when listening to his discourses on religion. Others, more 
^ Vincent Smith, Asiatic Review, July 19 15. 



AKBAR AS CHAKRA-VARTIN 

malicious, declare that he accidentally poisoned himself by 
swallowing a deadly pill intended for one of his nobles — a 
hoary fable of unknown antiquity which has been fastened on 
the tomb of many other monarchs besides Akbar. The truth 
seems to be that Akbar, following his physician's advice, was 
accustomed to take a weak decoction of opium for the internal 
disorder from Vv^hich he suffered, and it may well be believed that 
during the stress and sorrow of his later years he sometimes 
sought to soothe his troubled mind by the same means. He was 
neither an ascetic nor a saint of the conventional type ; but 
few of the great rulers of the earth can show a better record 
for deeds of righteousness, or more honourably and consistently 
maintained their ideals of a religious life devoted to the service 
of humanity. In the Western sense his mission was political 
rather than religious ; but in his endeavours to make the 
highest religious principles the motive power of State policy 
he won an imperishable name in Indian history and lifted the 
political ethics of Islam into a higher plane than they had ever 
reached before. 

It does not detract from his greatness as a man and ruler 
that his achievements fell short of his ideals — ^that the Din- 
Ilahi did not accomplish the spiritual regeneration of the 
rtding classes or wipe off the slate all the records of previous 
centuries of misgovernment, and that his schemes did not 
embrace a full recognition of the ancient Aryan system of self- 
government upon which the economic strength and political 
greatness of India stood firm longer than has been the case 
with any other empire in the world. But Akbar 's endeavours 
to realise the Aryan ideal are still worthy of imitation both 
by British rulers of India and by all statesmen for whom 
politics is a religion rather than a game of craft and skill. 



537 



INDEX 



Abbas Khan, author of the Tdnkh-i 

Sher Shdhi, 438 
Abbasid dynasty, 252, 254, 256, 257, 

279 
Abdul Malik I, Samanid king, 280 
Abdulla Khan Uzbek, King of Turan, 

517. 521 

Abdulla Khan Uzbek, one of Akbar's 
generals, 460-461, 464, 466 

Abdulla, brother of Ibrahim 'Adil 
Shah I of Bijapiir, 396-397 

Abdunnabi, Shaikh, 507-508 

Abdurrahim, Mirza, one of Akbar's 
generals, 483, 509-510, 524 

A hhisheka, coronation ceremony, gon., 
275 

Abu, Motmt, 266 

Abubekr, Sultan of Delhi, 367 

Abul Fath, Hakim, scholar and cour- 
tier, 522-523 

Abul Fath Daiid, Amir of Multan, 
285 

Abul Fazl, Akbar's counsellor : early 
years, 471-472 ; his rise into emin- 
ence, 473; Badauni's enmity to, 
474 ; Finance Minister, 476-477 ; 
\nsAm-i-Akban,^']T, memorial of , 
at Fatehpur, 479 ; signatory to the 
document recognising Akbar as 
spiritual leader, 496 ; in the dis- 
cussions at Akbar's court, 497 ; 
puts forward the proposition that 
the king shoiold be regarded as 
spiritual guide, 503, 504 ; helps in 
the reform of the administration of 
the Crown lands, 508 ; sent as 
Commissioner to the Dekhan, 530- 
531 ; disliked by Prince Salim, 531 ; 
assassinated, 533 ; mentioned, 463, 
486, 487, 492, 494, 501, 515, 516, 

518, 519, 532. 534-535 
Abyssinians: in the Bijapur royal 

bodyguard, 394 ; in the royal 
bodyguard of Ahmadnagar, 528, 
529, 530 



Acharya, caste name, 128 

Adham Khan Atka, one of Akbar's 
generals, 460, 461 

'Adil Shahi dynasty, 340, 385 

'Adil, or ' Adili, Shah — see Muhammad 
'Adil Shah 

'Adil Khan, son of Sher Shah, 445 

Aditya, a name of Vishnu, 205 

Adwaita doctrine of the Vedanta, 
326 

Afghanistan : Akbar sends expeditions 
against, 521-523 ; mentioned, 139, 
285 

Afghans : the Afghan Sultans of 
Delhi, 290 et seq. ; Afghans in pos- 
session of the Panjab, 379 ; de- 
feated by Babur at Panipat, 382- 
383 ; Afghan women in Firuz Shah 
Bahmani's harem, 387 ; defeated 
by Babur at Buxar, 425 ; the 
intrigues of Sher Khan against the 
Moguls, 430-431 ; defeat the Mo- 
guls at Busar and Kanauj, 432— 
433 ; in power under the Sher Shah 
dynasty, 437-448 ; Sher Shah's 
generosity to, 440 ; defeated by 
Humayun, 448 ; fight on the side 
of Hemu, 451 ; rise against Akbar, 
452, 459, 464; conquered by Akbar 
in Bengal, 4S0, 484-486 ; Akbar 
sends expeditions against, 521- 
523 ; mentioned, 377, 392, 454 

Agastya, sage, 127, 128 

Agni, the Fire-spirit : the horse 
sacrifice to, 121 ; mentioned, 7, 
28 

Agnimitra, Emperor of Magadha, 121, 
124 

Agra : the Taj Mahall at, 329, 
406 ; Babur's capital, 423, 425- 
426 ; taken by Hemu, 451 ; re- 
covered by Akbar, 452 ; fort of, 
rebuilt by Akbar, 466 ; Jestut 
chapel at, 473, 498 ; mentioned, 37, 
381, 383. 422, 423. 424. 427. 429. 

539 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



432, 433, 447, 454, 456, 459, 460, 

461, 469, 471, 477 n., 478, 482, 483, 
500, 531. 532, 533 
Agra and Oudh, province, 34, 265, 

459 

Agra and the Taj Mahdll, Handbook 
to, cited, 463 n. 

Agriculture : among the early Indo- 
Aryans, 14, 15 ; the Sukrd-niti- 
sdra on the profits of, 223 ; revived 
under Firuz Shah, 319 ; burdens 
on, relieved by Akbar, 526. See 
also Ryots 

Ahmad Shah I, Sultan of Gujerat, 
341, 343, 348-349 

Ahmad Shah II, Sultan of Gujerat, 
481 

Ahmad Shah Bahmani, Sultan of the 
Dekhan, 340, 341, 350, 358 

Ahmad Nizam Shah, Sultan of 
Ahmadnagar, 340 

Ahmad Khan L,odi: sided with the 
reformer Budhan, 380 

Ahmadabad : anciently Karnavati, 
341 ; made his capital by Ahmad 
Shah of Gujerat and rebuilt by 
him, 341 ; the J ami' Masjid at, 
341-342 ; mentioned, 327, 344, 
348, 351, 353. 354. 481, 482, 483. 
509, 510 

Ahmadnagar: Chand Bibi's defence 
of, 529 ; captured for Akbar, 530 ; 
mentioned, 340, 389, 393, 400, 401, 
403. 527, 528 

Am-i-A khan : mentioned, 477 ; Bloch- 
mann's translation, cited, 338 n., 
478 n., 489 n., 500 n., 507 n., 508 n., 
517 n., 519 n. ; Jarrett's transla- 
tion, cited, 472 n., 476 n., 493 nn., 
494 '>^- 5'^2 n., 519 n. 

Am-ul-Mulk Burhan Nizam Shah's 
commander-in-chief, 398 

Aitareya Brahmana, cited, 82 n. 

Ajanta: architecture at, 146; frescoes 
at, 184, 185, 213, 329, 418; men- 
tioned, 211 

Ajatasatru, King of Magadha, 89 

Ajivikas, sect, 91, 107 

Ajmir : pUlaged by Afghans, 293 ; the 
Arhai-din-ka Jhompra at, 294 ; 
m.entioned, 292, 459, 462, 463, 492, 
496 

Ajodhya : made his capital by Samu- 
dragupta, 153 ; mentioned, 37, 41, 
42, 151, 155, 167, 188, 292 

Akdsd, the cosmic ether, 239 

540 



Akbar : birth of, 435 ; left in his 
uncle Kamran's hands, 436 ; re- 
covered by his father, 447 ; suc- 
ceeds to the throne, 450 ; the 
Protectorship of Bairam Khan, 
450-454 ; his physical strength, 
his abilities and character, 450, 

458 ; defeats the pretender Hemii, 
452 ; trouble with the Afghans, 
452, 459 ; difficulties with Bairam 
Khan, 452-457 ; attempted to 
reconcile religious differences, 459, 
463 ; his political creed, 459 ; 
assumes control of the government, 

459 ; marries a Rajput princess, 
and wins the loyalty of the Raj- 
puts, 462 ; a ' much-married ' man, 
462-463 ; his religious tolerance, 
463, 472, 473, 474, 492, 513 ; cam- 
paign in Rajputana, 463-464, 466— 
469 ; his siege and capture of Chitor, 
294, 306, 467-469 ; attempt on his 
life, 465 ; relieved taxation, 465 ; 
campaign in Bengal, 466 ; builds 
Fatehpur-Sikri, 470 ; his conquest 
of the Dekhan, 470, 527-531 ; 
his love of learning and of philo- 
sophical discussion, 472-473, 474- 
475. 493. 499-500 ." adopted Indo- 
Aryan political and social ideals, 
473 ; the freedom of his opinions, 

475 ; his views on marriage, 475- 

476 ; his close attention to the 
details of government, and his 
varied interests, 477-479 ; his 
official gazette, 477-478 ; early 
revenue reforms, 479 ; and hunt- 
ing, 479 ; conquers Gujerat, 480- 
484 ; conquers Bengal, 484-486, 
491 ; revenue reforms, with Todar 
Mall, 486-490, 515 ; his steadfast 
adherence to the Muslim faith, 492- 
493, 494-495 ; the nature of his 
religious belief, 493-494, 495, 501- 
502 ; the Sunni sect and, 496 ; the 
discussions in the Ibadat-Khana, 
496-499, 511 ; his attitude towards 
Christianity, 473-474, 495, 498- 
499 ; studied Hindu philosophy 
and occult science, 500-501 ; main- 
tained the autocratic traditions of 
Islam, 502 ; asserts himself as 
spiritual leader of Islam in his 
empire, 503-506, 511 ; reformed the 
administration of the Crown lands, 
506-509 ; and the Dm-Ilahi, 511- 



INDEX 



519 ; doubtless influenced by Chai- 
tanya's teaching, 418 ; his con- 
siderate treatment of Hindus, 515— 
516 ; extends his sway over all 
Aryavarta, 520-525 ; his debt to 
the Rajput chieftains, 525 ; recog- 
nised as an ideal Aryan mon- 
arch, 525 ; the beneficence and 
efficiency of his rule, and the 
success of his policy, 525-527 ; 
his troubles with Prince SaHm, 531- 
536 ; death, 536 ; his mausoleum 
at Sikandra, 536 ; the cause of his 
death, 536-537 ; his aim and his 
achievement, 537 ; mentioned, 263, 
320, 338, 339, 355, 358, 381, 405, 
406, 449 

Akbar-ndma, the, cited, 515 nn. 

Al Idrisi, Arabian historian : on the 
Indian character, 250 

Al Kadir Billa-Abassy, Khalif, 285 

'Ala-ud-din, Stdtan of Delhi: sacks 
Deoghur, 300-301 ; murders Jalal- 
ud-din and seizes the throne, 
301 ; his tyranny, and adminis- 
trative methods, 301-305 ; his con- 
quests, 306-307 ; death, 307, 309 ; 
married a Rajput princess, 308 ; 
mentioned, 294, 311, 316, 319, 385, 
520 

'Ala-ud-din, quondam Sultan of 
Gaur, 335 

'Ala-ud-din, Sultan of Malwa, 384 

'Ala-ud-din, brother of Ibrahim Lodi : 
rose against Humayun, 429 

'Ala-ud-din, uncle of Ibrahim I,odi, 
382 

'Ala-ud-din, son-in-law of Nasir 
Khan, 358 

'Ala-ud-din Hasan, Afghan chieftain: 
sacked Ghazni, 290-291 

'Alai, Shaikh, Muslim revivalist: 
poses as the Mahdi, 338, 446, 471 ; 
mentioned, 498 

Alberuni, Arabian historian : cited, 
210, 243 

Albuquerque, Alfonso da, Portuguese 
navigator : in India, 345, 346 

Alchemy : studied by Akbar, 500 

Alcohol : abstinence from, promoted 
by Asoka's rules, 100. See Drink 
traffic 

Alexander the Great : his raid into 
the Panjab, 60, 63-65 ; mentioned, 

4. 344. 365 
Alexander, King of Epirus, 98 



Ali 'Adil Shah, Sultan of Bijapur, 
399-402, 403, 404, 406, 527, 528 

Ali Berid Shah, Sultan of Bidar, 
400 

Ali ibn Abu Talib, Khalif, 368, 

377 
Ali, Khalif, 331, 399 n. 
Ali, son of Burhan Nizam Shah, 398 
Allahabad, 152, 158, 335, 532, 535 
Alongoa, widow, Timiir's ancestor, in 

his fictitious pedigree, 377 
Alp Khan, Governor of Gujerat, 308 
Alptagin, ruler of Ghazni, 280 
Altamsh, Sultan of Delhi, 294, 299 
Alwar, 457 
Amalaka, ornament of temple spire: 

the symbolism of, 112, 113, 180; 

mentioned, 179, 182, 245 
Amaravati: the sculptures at, 130, 

146, 180 
Amarkot, 434-435 
Amdtya, or Home Minister, 36, 225 
Amber, Rajput royal family, 462 
Amina, wife of Burhan Nizam Shah, 

398 
Amir Berid, ruler of Kulbarga, 393, 

395. 396, 397 
Amir Khusru, poet, 308 
Amir-al-Umara, title, 462 
Ananda, the Buddha's disciple, 97 
Ananta — see Sesha 
Ancient and Medieval Architecture of 

India, cited, 112 n., 146 n., 217 n., 

219 n. 
Andhra dynasty, 123, 130-131, 139, 

142, 146, 150 
Andhra, the state: paramount in the 

South, 130 ; early relations with 

the North, 1 30-1 31 ; fall of the 

Andhra Empire, 147 
' Andli,' nickname of 'Adil Shah, 

446 
Anga, Aryan kingdom, 59 
Anhilwar, 341 
Animals : the sacrifice of, forbidden 

by Asoka, 92 ; Asoka's humane 

concern for, 92, 94 ; Akbar's 

concern for, 479 
Antardla, temple porch, 117 
Antigonos Gonatas, King of Mace- 
donia, 98 
Antiochos Soter, King of Syria : sends 

an embassy to Bindusara's court, 

87-88 
Antiochos Theos, King of Syria, 95, 

98 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Anula, Sinhalese princess, 96 
Apadana, the, at Persepolis, 75 
Apparswami, Saiva revivaUst, 245 
Aquaviva, Father Rodolfo, Jesuit: 
heads a mission to Akbar's court, 
498-499, 501 
Arabia: Indian trade with, 361 
Arabs: their advance on India, 210- 
211 ; invade and estabUsh them- 
selves in Sind, 188, 211, 250-252 ; 
their admiration for the people of 
India, 250-251 ; imbibed the prin- 
ciples of Indo-Aryan statecraft and 
borrowed the scientific elements 
of their scholarship from India, 
254-255 ; transmitted Hindu know- 
ledge to the West, 257 ; won no 
permanent political footing in 
India, and obtained no hold upon 
Indian religious feeling, 257 ; called 
' Asuras ' by the Hindu chroniclers, 
263 
Arahat, tank of Saint, in Buddhism, 

102 
Aravali hills, 294, 490, 491, 535 
Archaeological research in India has 
not been developed far, 43-44, 
104 
Archaeological Survey of India, 221 
Architecture: the early Indo- Aryans 
and, 20 ; antiquity of the Indo- 
Aryan building tradition, 76 ; the 
earliest Indo-Aryan buildings were 
of wood, 115-116; the continuity 
and vitality of the Indo-Aryan 
architectural craft tradition, 116; 
the traditional plan of the Hindu 
temple, 1 1 6-1 1 7 ; architecture of the 
Mahayana and Hinayana schools, 
146 ; of the Gupta era, 177-186 ; 
of Harsha's reign, 211 ; of the 
period of the Saiva revival, 213, 
216-217, 218-219, 238, 242-244 ; 
Fergusson's misleading nomencla- 
ture, 216, 217 ; the so-called Dravi- 
dian style is Indo-Aryan, 238 ; 
Jain temple architecture, 245 ; 
MusHm architecture borrowed 
Indian forms, 253 ; the ' Chalu- 
kyan style,' 245 ; Fergusson and 
the ' Pathan ' style, 283, 294-295 ; 
' Pathan ' architecture is purely 
Indian, 295-296, 343, 376 ; the 
development of Indo-Muhamma- 
dan architecture, 328-330 ; the 
' Saracenic ' architecture of Persia 

542 



founded on Buddhist building 
traditions, 328 ; the ' Saracenic ' 
architecture of India essentially 
Indian, 328-329 ; the evidence of 
the buildings of Gaur that the 
inspiration of Indo-Muhammadan 
architecture was Indo-Aryan, 337 ; 
the royal mosque at Kulbarga and 
the buildings at Bijapur, 340 ; the 
J ami' Masjid at Ahmadabad and 
the Jaina temple at Ranpur, 341- 
342 ; sculptured ornamentation 
and images abandoned by the 
Hindu craftsmen, 342-343 ; Fer- 
gusson's classification of pre-Mu- 
hammadan architecture, 348 n. ; 
the ' Mogul style ' the product of 
Indian culture, 376 ; the Bijapur 
school of, 406 ; the mausoleum of 
the Muhammadan period and its 
relation to the stiipa, 444-445 ; 
the J ami' Masjid at Fatehpur- 
Sikri, 470 ; Indian mosques repre- 
sent an adaptation of Indo-Aryan 
building tradition, 470 

Arhai-din-ka Jhompra, at Ajmir, 
294 

Ariana, 139, 328 

Arjiina, usurper — see Arunasa 

Arjiina, one of the Pandavas, 40, 188, 

414- 415 

Arkot, North and South, 239 w. 

Army : Chandragupta's, 86-87 ; -A-k- 
bar's, recruited largelj^ from the 
Hindus, 525 ; Akbar's, its effi- 
ciency and patriotic spirit, 526 

Art, Indian: the beginnings of, un- 
recorded, 43-44, 104 ; Mauryan 
art, 104-118 ; the history of Aryan 
art begins with the Mauryan epoch, 
104 ; the South absorbed and con- 
served Aryan artistic tradition, 
129 ; Hellenistic craft traditions 
on Indian soil, 133, 135 ; the art 
of the Mahayana and Hina3'ana 
schools of Buddhism, 145-146 ; Hel- 
lenistic tradition not the directing 
force of Indian artistic expression, 
169 ; art of the Gupta era, 177- 
186 ; Indian art traditions non- 
sectarian, 186 ; art of Harsha's 
reign, 211 ; art of Southern India 
in the seventh to the eleventh 
centuries, 242-246 ; the influence 
of the Turkish monarchs on Indian 
art, 295 ; the so-called ' Pathan ' 



INDEX 



art is essentially Indian, 295 ; the 
development of Indo-Muhamma- 
dan art, 328-330 ; Islam gave 
Indian art a new impulse, did not 
change Indian aesthetic principles, 
329. See also Architecture, Paint- 
ing, and Sculpture 
Artillery : first use of, in the Dekhan, 

387 

Arunasa, or Arjiina, usurper, 248- 
250 

Aryans, the Indian : closely related to 
the Greeks, 4 ; how they reached 
India, 4-5 ; the early culture of, 
5 et seq. ; the early social organisa- 
tion of, 5-6, 7-8, 14-22 ; the in- 
tellectual generosity of, 6 ; their 
civilisation the product of their 
own genius, 6-7 ; antiquity of the 
civilisation of, 8 ; their conquest 
of India essentially an intellectual 
one, 9 ; the village system of, 9- 
II, 15, 22-29 ; the coming of, to 
India, 13-14, 15, 33 ; patriarchy 
among, 14 ; agriculture among, 14, 

15 ; assimilated features from the 
Dravidian social system, 15 ; the 
instinct for racial purity among, 

16 ; the scope of the term ' Aryan ' 
widened, 16 ; the five social grades 
among, 16 ; and the origin of 
caste, 17 ; and the building craft, 
20 ; commercial intercourse of, 
with the Dravidian kingdoms and 
Western Asia, 2 1 , 4 3 , 60-6 1 ; political 
organisation of the Aryan tribes, 
22 ; the wonderful work of, in 
unifying the heterogeneous peoples 
of India, 32 ; never widely dis- 
tributed over India, 32 ; the physi- 
cal characteristics of, 32 ; the 
tribes of, did not enslave each 
other, 33-34 ; the origin of king- 
ship among, 35-37 ; their idea of 
kingship, 35-37, 82-83; constitu- 
tion of their king's council, 36 ; 
the principal kingdoms of, 37-38; 
Aryan republics, 38, 68, 69 ; the 
political fusion of Aryans and non- 
Aryans illustrated by the story 
of the Great War, 40-41 ; the 
Aryan belief in the divine power of 
sacrifice, 47 ; the Buddha's appeal 
to Aryan sentiment, 53 ; the unify- 
ing effect of Buddhism upon the 
Aryan political system, 55-56 ; the 



bond between the Indo-Aryan, 
Hellenic, and Iranian branches of the 
Aryan race, 60, 61 ; moral virtues 
of the Aryan character, 62 ; the 
foundation of the Mauryan dynasty 
the culminating point in Aryan 
political supremacy in India, 89 ; 
the reign of Asoka marked the 
final breaking-down of the racial 
barriers between Aryan and non- 
Aryan, 89 ; the Aryan law of suc- 
cession to the throne, 90 ; the 
history of Aryan art begins with 
the Mauryan epoch, 104 ; Indo- 
Aryan artistic tradition and Aryan 
royal craftsmen, 105-107 ; the 
earliest Aryan religious symbols, 
109 ; early Aryan dwellings were 
of wood, 1 1 5-1 16; Aryan re- 
ligious symbolism rejected graven 
images and materialistic vehicles 
of thought, 1 1 7-1 1 8 ; new ele- 
ments entered the Indo-Aryan 
pale as the result of the Turki 
invasions, 126 ; the Aryanisation 
of the South, 12 7-1 31 ; Aryan 
civilisation completely superseded 
Dravidian, 128-129 ; the spreading 
of Indo-Aryan civilisation over 
Asia, 145 ; the Aryan revival in 
the Gupta era, 149-158, 178; San- 
skrit the language of Aryan tradi- 
tion, 154-155 ; the independence 
of the Aryan character, 171 ; Indo- 
Aryan military ethics, 173 ; de- 
scendants of Hun and Turki in- 
vaders admitted within the Aryan 
pale, 176-177 ; the adverse effect 
of the infusion of barbarian blood 
upon Aryan tradition and polity, 
177 ; Aryan tradition conserved 
by the South, 227 ; the worth of 
the Aryan constitution, 235 ; the 
Aryanisation of the South gathered 
strength under the disasters to 
Aryan civilisation in the North, 
238, 325 ; Europe's indebtedness to 
Indo-Aryan culture, 254-255 ; Raj- 
put tribes and Aryan ancestry, 260- 
261 ; the Indo-Aryan administra- 
tive system adopted by the Mu- 
hammadan Sultans, 298 ; the 
Indian ideal permeated the social 
and spiritual life of the Muhamma- 
dan conquerors, 308 ; Hindu polity 
contrasted with Islamic, 322-323 ; 

543 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



the effect of the Muhammadan 
conquest upon Indo-Aryan art, 
327-330 ; the Indo-Aryans ob- 
tained ascendancy over the Dravi- 
dians by means of their horses, 361- 
362 ; the wisdom of the Aryan 
principle of putting commercial 
and military interests under high 
intellectual direction, 366 ; the 
Turkish conquerors absorbed Aryan 
culture, 376 ; the essentially demo- 
cratic character of the Hindu 
political system, 404-405 ; Aryan 
village life unaffected by the impact 
of Islam, 407-409 ; Aryan culture 
preserved through the period of 
the Muhammadan conquest, 408 ; 
Akbar recognised as an ideal Indian 
monarch, 525 ; the free institutions 
of Aryavarta crushed by Aurangzib, 
527 ; Akbar' s effort to realise the 
Aryan ideal, 537 

Aryavarta: supposed to be crescent- 
shaped, 34, 192 ; the extent of, in 
Samudragupta's time, 152; freed 
from foreign domination by Samu- 
dragupta, 154; Indo-Aryan kings 
never sought dominion outside the 
confines of, 171 ; the weakness of, 
to attack from without, 171-172 ; 
Siva's bow the symbol of, 254 ; 
political disunion in, helped the 
victorious progress of Islam, 257- 
258 ; Akbar extends his sway 
completely over, 520-525 ; men- 
tioned, 5^ 35, 38, 149, 150, 151, 
152, 183 

Asa Ahir, Hindu chieftain, 356-358, 
432 

Asad Khan (Khusru Turk), minister 
of Bijapiir, 392, 393, 394-397 

Asaf Khan, Gujerati general, 354 

Asaf Khan, Mogul general, 464, 465- 
466, 475 

Asana-prajinapaka, or ' Seat-arran- 
ger,' 52 

Asandhimitra, wife of Asoka, 103 

Ascetics : regulations excluding them 
from the villages, 70-71 ; regard 
paid to, 70 

Asiatic Review, cited, 494 n., 518 n., 
536 n. 

Asirgarh, fortress: Nasir Khan's plot 
to obtain possession of, 356-358 ; 
besieged and taken by Akbar, 358, 
531 

544 



Askari, Mirza, brother of Humayiin, 
431, 433, 435, 436, 447 

Asoka: gave State recognition to 
Buddhism, 57, 89 ; said to have 
studied Jainism, 59 ; the reign of, 
89-103 ; early years, 90 ; corona- 
tion, 90 ; his imperial standards 
bearing his edicts, 90-91, 96-97, 
105, 152, 180 ; converted to Bud- 
dhism, 91-92 ; his zeal in the 
propagation of Buddhism, 92, 93, 
95. 97-98 ; details of his govern- 
ment, as set forth in the edicts, 92- 

94 ; sends out Buddhist missions, 

95 ; his State pilgrimages, 96-97 ; 
character of his rule, 98-99 ; his 
religious tolerance, 99, 118 ; his 
Buddhist propaganda, its results 
and development, 99-102, 131 ; 
death, 102 ; incidents in his 
private life, 103 ; built the original 
temple at Bodh-Gaya, 112 ; in 
legends, sometimes confused with 
Kanishka, 142 ; Fa-Hien on the 
rxiins of his palace at Pataliputra, 
168 ; his propaganda consolidated 
Aryavarta, 258 ; mentioned, 43, 
62, 73, 83, 88, 104, 106, III, 116, 
117, 119, 120, 123, 125, 126, 127, 
129, 130, 131, 135, 137, 139, 144. 
146, 147, 148, 150, 152, 156, 160, 
164, 166, 196, 202, 220, 268, 320, 
326, 418, 458 

Asram, the Brahman village, 38 

Assam, 200, 250, 299 

AssemlDUes, ^^llage, of the South, 

227-235 ; election to, 230-233 
Asuras, enemies of the Aryans, 4, 73, 

181, 263 
Asvamedha, the horse sacrifice, 153. 

See Horse sacrifice 
Atgah Khan — see Muhammad Atgah 

Khan 
Atharva Veda: on the building of a 

house, 115; translated into Persian, 

499 

Attock, fortress, 523 

Augustus, Emperor: received em- 
bassies, from Indian kings, 139- 
140 

Aurangzib, Mogul emperor, 426 

527 
Avanti, ancient name of Malwa, 263. 

See Malwa 
Avantivarman, King of Kashmir, 

273. 274 



INDEX 



'Azam Khan Kokah (Khan-i-'Azam, 
'Aziz Kokah), foster-brother of Ak- 
bar, 476, 490, 509, 518, 524, 536 

'Aziz Kokah, Mirza — see 'Azam Khan 
Kokah 

Azurbaijan, 375 

Babaji Khanam, mother of Ismail 
'Adil Shah I of Bijapur, 390-391, 

394 
Babur : invited to the throne of 
Delhi, 381 ; conquers the Panjab, 
381-382 ; advances on Delhi, 382 ; 
defeats the Afghans at Panipat, 
382-383 ; enters Delhi as sovereign 
ruler, 384 ; his character, 420-422 ; 
his description of Hindustan, 421- 
422, 424 ; wins the battle of 
Fatehpur-Sikri, 425 ; defeats the 
Afghans at Bujxar, 425 ; his bene- 
ficent administration and liberal 
rule, 425-426 ; death, 426, 427 ; 
mentioned, 263, 282, 354, 381, 
393, 428, 429, 430, 431, 448 

Babylon : ruled by an Aryan dynasty, 
4' 337 ; early commercial inter- 
course of Southern India with, 129 ; 
mentioned, 5, 61, 119, 256 

Badakshan, 484, 521 

Badami dynasty, 245 

Badami, the temples at, 217, 242 

Badaiin Gate, Delhi, 303 

Badauni, Akbar's biographer, 465 n., 
474-475, 490-491. 493. 494 ai^d n., 
495. 496. 497. 498, 500 w., 501 andn., 
504, 505 n., 506, 508, 509, 512 n., 
513, 514, 516, 517, 518, 525 n., 

534^- 
Baghdad, 251, 252, 255,256,279,280, 

283, 285 
Bahadur Shah, Sultan of Gujerat, 

344. 346. 354. 429-430. 480 
Bahadur Nizam Shah, Sultan of 

Ahmadnagar, 528, 529, 530, 531 
Bahadxir Khan of Khandesh, 358, 

530-531 
Bahmani dynasty, 339-340, 385, 388, 

389. 393 
Bahmani kingdom, 339-340 ; end of, 

388 
Bairam, Sultan of Delhi, 299 
Bairam, Sultan of Ghazni, 290-291 
B airam Khan, one of B abur' s generals : 
helped Humayiin, 435, 436, 447, 
448 ; Protector during the minority 
of Akbar, 450-454 ; quarrels with 



Akbar, deposed, and restored, 453- 
456, 461 ; death, 457, 458 ; men- 
tioned, 483, 509, 524, 535 

Baktriana, 119, 138, 139 

Baladitya (Narasinhagupta), Gupta 
emperor, 174-175, 177, 184, 187 

Balkh, 255 

Baluchistan : the Arabs in, 210 ; 
Akbar sends an expedition into, 
521, 522 

Bana, poet, 192 

Banu Begam, wife of Humayun, 434- 
436 

Barabar hills: theAjivika hermitages 
in, 106-107 

Baramula Pass, 144 

Baran (Btdandshahr), 286 

Barmak family, 255 

Barnett, ly. D., cited, 121 n., 144 n., 
165 n. 

Barodia, U. D., cited, 58 n., 66 n., 
84 n. 

Baz Bahadur of Malwa, and Riipmati, 
355, 460, 464 

Beal, S., cited, 166 n., 237 n. 

Behlol Dodi, Afghan Sultan of Delhi, 
379. 410 

Belgaum, 395, 396, 397 

Benares : Fa-Hien at, 168 ; the 
stronghold of orthodox Brahmani- 
cal learning, 198, 219 ; sacked by 
Afghans, 293 ; famous as a seat 
of learning, 320 ; the university 
survived the Muhammadan con- 
quest, 408 ; mentioned, 38, 41, 

139. 173. 327. 413. 431, 432 

Bengal: a Musulman kingdom, 
usually subject to the Delhi 
Sultan, 299 ; throws off allegiance 
to Delhi, 313 ; part of the province 
of Gaur, 335 ; Satya-Narayana 
worshipped in, 338 ; the native 
dialect survived unchanged in, 
408 n. ; partitioned by Sher Shah, 
442 ; revolt in, quelled by Akbar, 
465-466 ; conquered by Akbar, 
480, 484-486, 491, 509 : disorders 
in, owing to Akbar's revenue 
reforms, 489-490 ; Prince Salim 
made governor of, 532 ; mentioned, 
34, 164, 191 n., 240, 266-267, 387, 
416, 431, 433, 451. 452, 454. 459, 
464, 524, 532. See Gaur 

Bengal, Eastern, 200, 250, 413 

Bengal, Bay of, 240 

Benoy Kumar Sarkar, 36 n. 

545 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Berar, 339, 355, 395, 529, 53° 

Bhagavad Gtta, the: Sankaracharya's 

commentary on, 219 ; translated 

into Bengali, 337; quoted, 155-156; 

mentioned, 155, 185, 187, 214, 220, 

414, 415 

Bhagirathi, river, 412, 414 

Bhagwan Das, Raja: one of Akbar's 
henchmen, 462 ; honoured by 
Akbar, 462 ; with Akbar in the 
campaign in Gujerat, 481 ; would 
not recognise Akbar as an exponent 
of Aryan religion, 495 ; a daughter 
of, married to Prince SalTm, 520 ; 
leads an expedition into Kash- 
mir, 521 ; death, 525 ; mentioned, 

534 

Bhakti, or devotion: the spirit of, 
quickened the early Christian 
churches, 141 ; the influence of, 
felt throughout Asia, 209 ; the 
spirit of, touched Muhammad, 
210; Chaitanya adopted the doc- 
trine of, 414, 417 ; of the Din- 
Ilahi, 512; mentioned, 11 1 

Bhakti-marga, the path of devotion : 
philosophical ideal, 108 ; Vaishnava 
philosophy identified with, 113; 
Mahayana doctrine identified with, 
138, 141 ; the sikhara a symbol of, 
245; mentioned, 136 

Bharata tribes, 40 

Bharata-Varsha, name for Aryavarta, 
171. See Aryavarta 

Bharhut : the stupas at, 107, 109, no, 
116, 118 

Bhashyas, Sanskrit classics, 231 

Bhaskaracharya, author of the Lila- 
wati, 499 

Bhaskaravarma, or Kumara, King of 
Kamariipa, 200 

Bhatnir, 372 

Bhavabhuti, dramatist, 264 

Bhikkus : Hiuen-Tsang on, 197-198 

Bhima, one of the Pandavas, 40, 91 

Bhinmal, or Srimal, 266 

Bhitari, 173 

Bhoj Tirumal Rai, claimant to the 
throne of Vijayanagar, 395 

Bhoja, Raja of Malwa, 264, 265 

Bholpur, the lake of, 265 

Bhumias, or land-owners, of Raja- 
sthan, 262 

Bhuvanesvar, 183, 211 

Biana, 424 

Bias, river 64, 372. See Hyphasis 



546 



Bibi Kadbanii — see BTbl Naila 

Bibi Naila, or Bibi Kadbanu, mother 
of Firuz Shah, 315-316, 317, 327 

Bidar, 340, 389, 395 

Bihar, 38, 59, 266-267, 294, 299, 335, 
337, 430, 431, 432, 442, 482, 484, 
485, 509. See also Magadha 

Bihar! Mall, Raja, 462, 463 

Bijapiir : the architecture of, 340, 
406 ; becomes chief city of the 
Dekhan, 340 ; the Turkish dynasty 
of, and the struggle with Vija- 
yanagar, 385-403 ; Ali ' Adil Shah' s 
mosque at, 406 ; Akbar becomes 
suzerain over, 531 ; mentioned, 
327, 527. 528, 529 

Bikanir, 116 

Bindusara, Gupta emperor, 87-88, 
142 

Bir Singh, Raja of Urchah, 533 

Birbal, Raja: Poet Laureate at Ak- 
bar's court, 475 ; and the 'Ulamas, 
475. 496 ," memorial to, at Fateh- 
pur, 479 ; a member of the Din- 
IlahT, 518 ; in joint command of an 
expedition against the Afghans, 
522-523 ; slain, 523 ; Akbar's grief 
for, 523-524 

Birds : Asoka issues regulations pro- 
tecting, 94 

Blochmann, H., cited, 338 n., 478 w., 
488, 489 «., 500 n., 507 n., 508, 
517 n., 519 n. 

Bo Tree — see Bodhi Tree 

Bodh-Gaya : the Bodhi Tree at — see 
Bodhi Tree; the Buddha at, 49, 
112, 135 ; the temple at, 112, 144, 
146, 168 n. ; a monastery founded 
at, by the Sinhalese, 154 ; waste 
and desolate, in the time of Fa- 
Hien, 166 ; Fa-Hien at, 168 ; 
Hiuen-Tsang on, 196 ; Chaitanya 
makes a pilgrimage to, and gains 
enlightenment at, 414, 417 ; men- 
tioned, 106, 114 

Bodhi Tree. I. In the Aryan village, 
23,109. II. At Bodh-Gaya: Bud- 
dha at, 49, 112, 135 ; Sanghamitra 
took a branch of, to Ceylon, 96 ; 
the story of, represented at Sanchi, 
96 ; Asoka visits, 97 ; Tishyarak- 
shita tries to destroy, 103 ; sym- 
bolically represented in the Bhar- 
hut stiipa, 109 ; uprooted and 
replanted, 196 ; mentioned, 144, 
154, 199 



INDEX 



Bodhidharma, Buddhist patriarch, 
247 

Bodhisattva, 135. See Buddha 

Bodhisattvas, 135, 138 

B odzontschar : Timur ' s ancestry ficti- 
tiously traced to, 377 

Bombay, 146, 346 

Borobudur, 145 

Brahma, the Creator : the temple or 
place of worship of, in the Aryan 
village, 23, 109 ; the eastern gate in 
the Aryan village dedicated to, 27 ; 
name representing all birth symbols 
in Indo- Aryan religion, 31 ; Saras- 
vati regarded as the active force 
of, 46 ; represented as a suppliant 
before the Buddha, 54 ; gate in 
Pataliputra dedicated to, 77 ; the 
lotus associated with, 106 ; Buddha 
took the place of, in Mahayanist 
ritual, 109, 132 ; in the Three As- 
pects, 136, 185 ; the image of, sym- 
bol of creation, 217 ; divided the 
people into the four classes, 222 ; 
mentioned, 29, 203, 500 

Brahmachavin, Brahman student, 18, 
411 

Brahmagupta, mathematician, 255 

Brahmanism : the schism between 
Buddhism and, traceable to the 
divergent outlook between the 
Brahman and Kshatriya thinkers, 
40 ; the doctrines of, freely con- 
troverted, 50 ; an exclusive cult, 
50 ; the attitude of early Buddhism 
to, 54 ; Buddhism and Jainism 
both a revolt against, 59 ; the 
influence of Brahmanical thought 
upon Buddhism, 99 ; the pessi- 
mistic school of philosophy most 
typical of Brahmanical thought, 
108 ; the Three Aspects of, 109 ; 
the stiipa part of the symbolism of, 
no. III ; the interaction of Brah- 
manism and Buddhism, 1 21-123 >" 
not favoured by the Andhra kings, 
131 ; did not permit an image of 
the Supreme Deity to be wor- 
shipped, 132 ; the growth of Brah- 
man influence in the Gupta age 
and the subordination of Bud- 
dhism, 148-149, 155-157 ; Fa-Hien 
makes few references to, 167 ; 
Buddhism grew out of, 170 ; the 
m.utual tolerance of Brahmanism, 
Buddhism, and Jainism, 185 ; Saiv- 



ism the especial cult of, 215 ; 
Sankaracharya's championship of, 
219-220 ; asserts political supre- 
macy after Harsha's death, 249 ; 
the conflict between Buddhism and, 
gave Islam its opportunity, 258 ; 
the virtue of Brahmanical social 
science, 259-260 ; the waning of 
Brahman culture, and the purging 
influence of Islam on Hinduism, 
324-325 ; the choicer spirits of 
Brahmanism worked to bring Islam 
into the Hindu synthesis, 326. See 
also Brahmans 
Brahmans : the Indo-Aryan priestly 
caste, 8, 16 ; gradually obtained 
precedence over the Kshatriyas, 17, 
39-40, 46 ; the members of, not 
born into the order, but initiated, 

1 8 ; their high moral standard, 1 8- 

19 ; penalty upon, for offences 
against the order, 19 ; the higher 
craftsmen had a social status equal 
to, 19-20 ; penalty upon, for theft, 
21 ; Brahman philosophers gene- 
rally adhered to the Saiva school, 
31 ; the Brahmanical view of the 
effect of Buddhism upon Vedic 
revelation, 45 ; growth of power 
of the Brahmanical priesthood, 46 ; 
the Brahmanical priesthood and 
the mantram, 46-47 ; and sacrifice, 
47-48 ; some Brahmans leaned to 
the doctrine of the Buddha, 53- 
54 ; hostility of the Brahmans to 
the Buddha's propaganda, 54 ; 
not exempt from heavy punish- 
ment, under Chandragupta's rule, 
69, 81 ; severely penalised for in- 
dulging in liquor, 79 ; rules govern- 
ing, laid down in the Code of Manu, 
159-160, 161, 163 ; learned Brah- 
mans exempt from taxation, 162 ; 
Brahmanhood the avenue to the 
attainment of the highest aim of 
humanity, 164 ; Fa-Hien and, 170 ; 
prestige of the caste grows, 177 ; 
Hiuen-Tsang on, 196 ; the Sukrd- 
nitisdra on the caste, 222 ; an 
unlearned Brahman had no civil 
rights, 231; Brahmanical 'tyranny,' 
235 ; persecuted by Firuz Shah, 
317 ; migration of, to the South, 
following upon the Muhammadan 
invasions, 325 ; under Muslim rule, 
for a time held themselves aloof 

547 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



from public affairs, 339 ; Marco 
Polo's observations on the Brah- 
mans of Gujerat, 364 ; employed 
in the Muhammadan revenue ad- 
ministration, 394, 409 ; opposed 
Chaitanya, 416, 417 ; mentioned, 
33, 38, 182. See also Erahmanism 

Brahmaputra, river, 187 

Brahmdsiddhdnta, the, 255 

Brahmavarta, the name given by the 
Aryans to their territory in India, 

33 
Bridges, 222 

Briggs, J„ cited — see Perishta 
Brihadratha, Mauryan emperor, 119 
Brihaspati, King of Kashmir, 272, 

273 

Brindaban: Chaitanya' s pilgrimage 
to, 417 

British Museum, 153, 158 

Buddha, the : a member of the 
Kshatriya class, 20 ; as statesman 
and social reformer, 45-56 ; not 
a phenomenon in disputing ortho- 
dox Brahmanical theories of his 
time, 45 ; not an entirely original 
thinker, 45-46 ; the institutions 
which he came to attack, 46-49 ; a 
master of the philosophical theories 
of his time, 49 ; the reasons for 
the success of his mission, 50 ; his 
teaching appealed to Aryan senti- 
ment, 51-52, 53-54 ; constitution 
and rules of the Sangha, 52-53 ; 
the Brahmans' attitude to, 53-55 ; 
the influence of his teaching upon 
Brahmanism, and upon India, 55- 
56 ; an inspired interpreter of 
psychological laws rather than a 
reUgious teacher, 56 ; possessed 
a faculty for organisation, 57 ; 
Asoka's pilgrimage to his birth- 
place, 97 ; came to be regarded 
as the Supreme Deity, 99, 109 ; 
incidents in the life of, depicted 
on the stiipas of Bharhut and 
SanchT, 107 ; took the place of 
Brahma in the Trinity of Bud- 
dhism, 109 ; worshipped as Vishnu- 
Narayana, 109 ; attained Nirvana 
under the Bodhi Tree, 112 ; a 
national hero, 114 ; the image of, 
never appears in the sculpture of 
Buddhist shrines of the Mauryan 
period, 117 ; the personality of, 
forbidden to be worshipped, 117; 



the attributes of divinity popu- 
larly ascribed to, 132, 134 ; images 
of, not allowed to be worshipped, 
132-133 ; worshipped as a divinity, 
133 ; sculptured images of, began 
to be carved, under the influence 
of Hellenic tradition, 133 ; the 
divinity of, accepted by the Ma- 
hayanist school, 138 ; regarded as 
Vishnu, a cosmic principle, 145 ; 
displaced by Krishna as a popular 
hero, 155 ; worshipped as an in- 
carnation of Vishnu, 184 ; said to 
have lived at Nalanda, 199 ; estab- 
lished the I^aw on the tradition of 
the Indo- Aryan village community, 
209 ; forbade imaginative draw- 
ings of men and women, 210 n.; 
may have been a Saiva devotee, 
268 ; Chaitanya' s success as a 
teacher during his lifetime compar- 
able to the Buddha's, 417 ; was 
probably worshipped as the Deity, 
418 ; mentioned, 26 n., 62, 107, 
119, 172, 203, 205, 326, 414. See 
also Buddhism and Sangha 
Buddhism : more a social than a 
religious revolution, 50 ; its unify- 
ing effect upon India, 55-56 ; 
Asoka gave State recognition to, 
57, 89 ; aifinity between Jainism 
and, 59 ; progress of, in the first 
two centuries after the Buddha's 
death, 89-90 ; Asoka converted to, 
91-92 ; Asoka's zeal for the propa- 
gation of, 92, 93, 95, 97-98 ; Ceylon 
converted to, 95-96 ; essentially a 
democratic movement, 99 ; the 
influence of Brahmanical thought 
upon, 99 ; the results of Asoka's 
propaganda of, 101-102, 107 ; the 
Trinity of, 109, 136-137 ; the 
stupa part of the symbolism of, 
no; why Buddhist art appro- 
priated both sikhara and stupa as 
symbols, 113-114; the tolerance of 
Buddhistic teaching, 118 ; the con- 
flict between and interaction of 
Brahmanism and Buddhism, 121- 
123 ; Pushyamitra said to have 
been antagonistic to, 121, 123 ; 
spread over Western Asia, 125; 
the first Turki invaders of India 
had probably been converted to 
Buddhism, 125-126 ; the organi- 
sation of tbe Buddhist Churci 



548. 



INDEX 



based on the tradition of the vil- 
lage community, 126; the effect 
of, on Asia and on India, 126 ; 
Amaravati one of the seats of Bud- 
dhist learning in the South, 130 ; 
had much influence in the South, 
131 ; its increased following and 
its changed character in the first 
century B.C., 131-132 ; the parent 
stem for many different schools of 
thought, 132 ; did not permit an 
image of the Supreme Deity to 
be worshipped, 132 ; and the 
doctrine of Yoga, 134 ; and the 
dogma of reincarnation, 134-135 ; 
and the doctrine of the One in 
Many, 135-138 ; the encroach- 
ment of Brahmanical symbolism 
in, 136-137 ; the formation of the 
Mahayana and Hinayana schools, 
137-138 ; the Kushan Empire a 
centre of Buddhist culture, 138 ; 
development of Buddhist propa- 
ganda in China and the influence 
of Buddhist idealism upon Chris- 
tianity, 139; Kanishka and, 142- 
143 ; lost its predominance to 
Brahmanism, 148-149, 155-157 ; 
adopted the Vedic deities, 148 ; 
the impress of Buddhist ethics 
upon Brahmanical laws, 160 ; Fa- 
Hien's observations on the condi- 
tions of, 166-170 ; its evolution 
and disintegration, 170 ; Buddhist 
monasteries and shrines devastated 
by Huns, 176 ; the mutual toler- 
ance of Buddhism, Brahmanism, 
and Jainism, 185 ; the Law of the 
Sangha an adjustment rather than 
a revolution in Aryan thought, 190 ; 
Hiuen-Tsang on, 196 ; the spiritual 
impulse of, felt throughout Asia, 
209 ; the western extension of, 210; 
the relation of Saivism and Vaish- 
navism to, 213 ; Sankaracharya's 
influence upon, 219-220 ; favoured 
the growth of a vernacular litera- 
ture, 237 ; few traces of Buddhist 
architecture in Southern India, 
244 ; China becomes the seat of 
the Buddhist patriarchate, 247 ; 
Harsha's favouritism to, 248-249 ; 
lost its influence as a popular 
religion in India, 249 ; the conflict 
between Brahmanism and, gave 
Islam its opportunity, 258 ; helped 



to emasculate the manhood of 
India, and made easier the Mu- 
hammadan conquest, 259-260 ; 
favoured by the Pala kings of 
Bengal, 266, 267 ; flourished in 
Kashmir, 269 ; the organisation 
of, broken up hj the storm of the 
Muhammadan invasions in Hindu- 
stan, 325 ; the theories of Buddha 
were given a Vedic interpretation, 
326 ; the four paths of the Bud- 
dhist Sangha, 512. See also Buddha 
and Sangha 

Buddhists : reckoned as heretica in 
Chandragupta's time, 77, 84 ; said 
to have been persecuted by Pushya- 
mitra, 121, 123 

Budhan, reformer, 380 

Building — see Architecture and Crafts- 
men 

Bukhara, 139 

Buland Darwaza, of the Grand 
Mosque of Fatehpur, 470, 480 

Bulandshahr, 286 

Bundelkhand, 287, 300 

Burhan Nizam Shah I, Sultan 
of Ahmadnagar : his opportunist 
policy, 393 ; his conflict with 
Bijapiir, 395-397 ; routed by Ibra- 
him of Bijapur, 396 ; death, 397 ; 
mentioned, 398 

Burhan Nizam Shah II. Sultan of 
Ahmadnagar, 527-528 

Burhan, pretender to the throne of 
Gujerat, 480, 481 

Burial regulations in Pataliputra, 
78 

Burma : Indian trade with, 145, 236 ; 
mentioned, 75, 115, 240 

Biitiiga II, Raja, 239 

Buxar : Babur defeats the Afghans 
near, 425 ; Sher Shah defeats 
Humayun near, 432, 433 

Cabrai,, Pedro Alvarez, Portuguese 
navigator : in India, 345 

^adi-i- J ahan, or Law Officer, the 
office of, 507 

9ahib-i-Zaman, spiritual head of Is- 
lam, 512 

Calendar: Akbar institutes changes 
in, 514 

CaUcut: the Portuguese at, 344- 

345 
Cankxina, Lalitaditya's minister, 271 
Canpaka, Harsha's minister, 268 

549 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Canton, China : made the seat of the 

Buddhist patriarchate, 247 
Caste : not a hindrance to progress in 
the Indo-Ar^j-an social system at 
its best, 6 ; origin of, 17 ; caste 
distinctions clearly defined in the 
laws of Mann, 159 ; the admit- 
tance of descendants of foreigners 
within the Aryan pale made the 
caste system stricter, 177 ; caste 
distinctions ignored in Sankara- 
charya's monastic order, 220 ; the 
Sukrd-nitisdra on, 222 ; the merit 
of the caste system, 260 ; the 
effect of the political creed of 
Islam upon the system, 405-406 ; 
the village schools open only to 
members of the four castes, 409 
Cattle : regulations for the care of, 
under Chandragupta's government, 
80 
' Celestial Bride, the,' Great Mosque 

at Ghazni, 282, 289, 327 
Ceylon : converted to Buddhism by 
Asoka's missions, 95-96 ; practi- 
cally a part of Aryan India in 
Samudragupta's time, 153-154 ; 
Fa-Hien in, 165, 170 ; the last 
refuge of sectarian Buddhism, 220 ; 
South Indian trade with, 236 ; 
South Indian wars with, 236 ; 
conquered by the Cholas, 240, 241; 
mentioned, 42, 98, 145, 153, 164 
Chaitanya : his life and work, 410- 
419 ; mentioned, 338, 342, 380, 
420, 511 
Chaitdnya-charit-amrita, cited, 416, 

417 n., 419 n. 
Chakra-vartin, supreme ruler : Akbar 
as, 520-537; mentioned, 260, 266, 
514 n. 
Chalukyan dynasty, 188, 212, 218, 
236, 238, 240, 242, 245 ; the Chalu- 
kyas of Kalyan, 240 
Chalukyan Empire, 188, 217 
' Chalukyan style,' 245 
Champanir, Raja of, 343 
Champanir, fortress, 343, 354, 430 
Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya's 
minister : helps Chandragupta to 
win the throne of Magadha, 66-67 • 
the reputed author of the Kautiltya- 
artha-Sdstra, 67 ; his political 
policy, 69 ; his part in building up 
the Magadhan Empire, 86 ; men- 
tioned, 59, 62, 82, 84, 90, 98 



Chand Bardai, poet, 292 

Chand Bibi, wife of AH 'Adil Shah, 
401, 528-530; her defence of Ah- 
madnagar, 529 

Chandalas, low non- Aryan tribes : ex- 
cluded from the Aryan village, 77 ; 
mentioned by Fa-Hien, 160, 161 ; 
social intercourse with, forbidden, 

165 

Chandela dynasty, 265 

Chanderi, fortress, 354, 425 

Chandra, the Moon-god, 41 ; the 
worship of, a Brahmanical cult, 
41, 192 ; the cult of, 121 

Chandra-pal, Rajput chieftain, 287 

Chandra-putras, ' sons of Chandra,' 
41, 121 

Chandra-vamsa, the race of Chandra, 
41-42 

Chandragupta Maurya : said to have 
inclined to Jainism, 59, 84 ; the 
reign of, 66-87 ; family connec- 
tions, 66 ; relations with Alexander 
the Great, 66 ; expels Macedonian 
garrisons from the Panjab and wins 
the throne of Magadha, 66-67 ; 
defeats Seleukos, 67 ; consolidates 
Aryavarta under his rule, 67 ; not 
a despot, 68, 69, 82 ; his political 
policy, 69-70 ; details of his 
government, 70-86 ; his states- 
manship inspired by Indo-Aryan 
tradition, 76 ; his Council, 82 ; 
details of his ordinary life, 84 ; 
his revenue system, 85-86 ; his 
army and navy, 86-87 ; death, 87 ; 
mentioned, 62, 89, 98, 119, 142, 
151, 160, 184, 190, 228, 426 

Chandragupta Gupta I, Emperor of 
Magadha, 149-152 

Chandragupta Gupta II (Vikrama- 
ditya), 158, 164, 171, 172, 186 

Chauhan clan, 292 

Chaupar, a game, 477 

Chenab, river, 64, 371 

Chera dynasty — see Kerala 

Chidambaram : the temple at, 238- 

239, 243 
Chihil tandn, the forty true repre- 
sentatives of Muhammad, 515 
China : students from, came to India, 
126 ; armies from, advance against 
India, 142 ; Indian intercourse 
with, 143, 361 ; Buddhism spread 
over, 144 ; Buddhism continued to 
flourish in, after it had been sup- 



INDEX 



planted in India, 220 ; enters into 
India's political affairs, 247 ; be- 
comes the seat of the Buddhist 
patriarchate, 247 ; her part in the 
development of Muslim culture, 
256 ; Muhammad Tughlak invades, 
311 ; mentioned, 75, 165, 169, 170, 
250, 312 

Chinghiz Khan : claimed as ancestor of 
Timur, 368, 377 ; Babur's mother 
a descendant of, 420 

Chitor : rallying-point of the Rajputs, 
263 ; taken by Afghans, 294 ; the 
palaces and Towers of Victory 
at, 295 and n., 344 ; besieged 
and taken by 'Ala-ud-din, 306 ; 
recovered by the Rajputs, 309 ; 
taken by Sher Shah, 444 ; be- 
sieged and taken by Aklaar, 467- 
469 ; mentioned, 341, 347, 353, 
429 

Chitrakuta, sacred hill of, 153 

Chola art, 242-246 

Chola dynasty, 43, 129, 236, 238- 
246, 325, 388 

Chola Empire, 95, 98, 212, 238-241, 

243. 359 

Choul, port, 346 

Christianity : the soil prepared for, 
by the Buddhist missions, 100; in- 
fluence of Buddhist idealism upon, 
139 ; the beginnings of, in India, 
380 ; Christians recognised by 
Yusuf 'Adil Shah of Bijapur, 
389; Akbar's tolerant attitude to, 
473-474, 495, 498-499 ; mentioned, 

157 
Chullavagga, cited, 53 n., 210 n. 
Chunar, fortress, 431, 432, 451 
Circassians, 385, 387 
Climate of India : relatively active in 

obliterating traces of civilisation, 

44 
Cochin : the Portuguese at, 345 
Coinage : of Kadphises I and II, 142 ; 
Kanishka's, 143 ; Skandagupta 
reduces the standard of the gold 
coinage, 174 ; the gold standard 
raised by Puragupta, 174 ; Mu- 
hammad Tughlak' s experiment 
with the currency, 312-313 
Colombo Museum, 245 
Colonisation, early Indian, 145 
Commerce : with Mesopotamia, 4, 
337 ; with Asia Minor, 60-61 ; 
of Southern India, with the North 



and with Europe, 129-130 ; with 
Burma, 145, 236 ; Marco Polo's 
observations on Indian commerce, 
360-361,362; burdens on, relieved 
by Akbar, 526 

Comorin, Cape, 238 

Conjeveram, or Kanchipura, 153, 237, 
239 and n., 242, 326, 408 

Co-operative principle, in ancient 
India, 71, 77, 150, 185-186 

Coromandel coast, 359 

Cosmic Cross, 25, 28, 473 

Cotterill, H. B., cited, 60 

Council, the king's : constitution of, 
36 ; Chandragupta's Coimcil, 82 ; 
Manu on, 161 ; the Sukrd-niti- 
sdra on the constitution and func- 
tions of, 225 ; and the succession 
to the throne, 248 ; an essential 
element in the Indo-Aryan polity, 
270 

Courts, judicial : in Chandragupta's 
government, 80-81. See Justice 
and I/aw 

Craftsmen : the higher ranks of, had 
a status equal to the Brahmans, 
19-20, 105 ; craftsmanship did not 
always hold an inferior status, 76 ; 
supposed to be under the special 
protection of the king, 81 ; the 
Aryan royal craftsmen : their 
status, the rule forbidding them to 
work for private gain, their artistic 
tradition, some works of, 105-107 ; 
the continuity and vitality of the 
Indian architectural craft tradi- 
tion, 116 ; have always been 
closely associated with religious 
propaganda, 128, 307 ; Indian 
craft traditions non-sectarian, 186 ; 
craftsmen the spoil of plundering 
expeditions, 236 ; their lives spared 
in battle, 237, 372 ; Indian crafts- 
men made to work for Islam, 307 ; 
many taken by Timiir at the cap- 
ture of Delhi distributed over 
Western Asia by him, 376 ; Akbar's 
interest in the work of his crafts- 
men, 478 

Crescent, the ensign of Islam, bor- 
rowed from India, 254 

Cunningham, General Sir A. F. D., 

183 
Cypress, the symbolism of, 182 
Cyrene, 95, 98 
Cyrus the Great, 61, 62 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



DABAIvWARAH, 288 

Daftar-Khana, or Record Of&ce, Ak- 
bar's, at Fatehpur, 476-477 

Dahir, King of Sind, 250, 251, 252, 
263 

Dakshina, or reward, of the Brahman 
priests, 47 

Damaras, feudal landlords, 271, 272 

Damayanti, a heroine of the Maha- 
bharata, 408 

" Dance of the Seven Virtues, The," 
201 

Daniyal, Sultan, son of Akbar : his 
intemperance, 476, 534 ; besieges 
and takes Ahmadnagar, 530 ; be- 
trothed to a daughter of Ibrahim 
of Bijapiir, 531 ; death, 536; men- 
tioned, 457, 462, 476, 492 

Dankiila, Raja of, 349 

Dards, tribe, 271 

Darius, 61, 62, 68 

Dasaratha, Maury an emperor, 119 

Dasharatha, King, 41 

Dasyus, or Dasas, Indian non-Aryan 
aborigines, 33, 178, 181 

Daiid Khan, Afghan nder in Bengal, 
484-486 

Daulat Khan Dodi, Governor of 
Lahore, 381-382 

Daulatabad, 300, 312, 357, 386, 400, 
See Deoghur 

Davids, Mrs Rhys, cited, 5inn., ^^n. 

Davids, T. W. Rhys, cited, 104 n. 

Death, the Dord of — see Yama 

Debi, Brahman, instructed Akbar in 
Hindu lore, 500 

Deimachos, Seleukos' ambassador to 
India, 87 

Dekhan : said to have been included 
in the Maxiryan Umpire by Bindu- 
sara, 87 ; the Aryanisation of, 127- 
130 ; becomes for a time the 
stronghold of Indo-Aryan civilisa- 
tion, 131 ; revival of the power of 
the states of, 188 ; history of, from 
the seventh to the eleventh cen- 
turies, 212-241 ; the rise and 
progress of Saivism in, 213-220 ; 
the Indo-Aryan codes of law 
observed in, 226-227 ; invaded 
by 'Ala-ud-din, Sultan of Delhi, 
300-301, 306-307 ; Aryan culture 
gained an impetus in, as a result 
of the Muhammadan invasions of 
Hindustan, 325 ; first Muhamma- 
dan kingdom in, formed by Hasan 

552 



Gangii, 339 ; Muhammadan archi- 
tecture in, 340 ; the struggle be- 
tween Bijapur and Vijayanagar, 385 
-403 ; the lives of prisoners of war 
spared in, 387 ; artillery first used 
in, in the campaign of Bijapiir 
against Vijayanagar, 387 ; the 
problem of Musalman statecraft 
in, had little to do with sectarian 
differences, 403-405 ; Akbar's con- 
quest of, 470, 527-531 ; mentioned, 
153- 154. ^75, 191. 263, 309, 310, 
333. 334. 339. 35°, 353, 355, 358, 
482 

Delhi : captured by Afghans, 293 ; 
capital of the paramount Mxihani- 
madan state in Northern India, 
299 ; Muhammad Tughlak's caprice 
and, 312 ; Timxir marches on, cap- 
tures, and sacks, 371-377 ; after 
Timur's invasion, 378-379 ; Babur 
invited to the throne of, 381 ; 
Babur advances on, 382 ; entered 
by Babur after Panipat, 383 ; not 
adopted by Babur as his capital, 
423 ; entered by Humayun on his 
restoration, 448 ; Hiunayun's mau- 
soleum at, 448-449 ; taken by 
Hemii, 451 ; recovered by Akbar, 
452 ; the Afghans make a new 
attempt on, 459 ; mentioned, 164, 
263, 290, 292, 294, 298, 304, 305, 
307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 320, 321, 
350, 447, 454, 461, 465 

Delhi, Old, sacked by Ttmiir, 375 

Delhi Empire, 290-323 ; break-up of, 
333. 335-358, 367, 446 ; Malwa 
subject to, 347 

Deodar, the tree, emblem of eternity, 
III 

Deoghvir, 300, 306, 308, 312. See 
Daulatabad 

Deva, Raja of Vijayanagar, 387 

Devas, Aryan gods : the Buddha's 
teaching did not depose, 54, 118 ; 
their places in the Aryan village 
system, 135-136 ; mentioned, 4, 

24. 25 
Devabhiiti, King of Magadha, 124 
Devaki, mother of Krishna, 173 
Devi Das, Raja, defended Mirtha, 

463-464 
Dewal Devi, princess of Gujarat, 

308 
Dhar, 327, 341, 347 
Dhara, 264 



INDEX 



Dharma, the Truth ot Law : the 
Buddhist spiritual counterpart of 
the Aryan common law, 53 ; the 
Dharma of Buddha proclaimed the 
law of the land by Asoka, 89 ; set 
forth in Asoka' s edicts, 91 ; Asoka' s 
zeal for the proclamation of, 92, 93- 
94, 95, 97-98 ; in the Trinity of 
Buddhism, 109, 137 ; the proclama- 
tion of, symbolised, 117 ; men- 
tioned, 54 

Dharmapala, King of Bengal, 266, 267 

Dharmasdlas, travellers' rest-houses, 
167, 348 

Dhritarashtra, father of the Kau- 
ravas, 40 

Dhwaja-stambhas, or imperial stan- 
dards: Asoka's, 90-91, 96-97. 105, 
152, 164, 180 ; Chandragupta II's 
'Iron Pillar' at Delhi, 164 

Dilawar Shah, Sultan of Malwa, 347 

Dilshad Agha, sister of Yusuf Turk, 

391 
Din-Ilahi : founded, 512 ; the four 
degrees of, 512-513 ; its religious 
purpose, 513-514 ; its success, 517 ; 
the attitude of the Hindus towards, 

518 ; its political purpose, 518- 

519 ; the reason for its enthu- 
siastic acceptance by the people, 
519 ; its far-reaching influence, 
519 ; a measure of reform, 525- 
526; despisedby Jahangir, 5I8,527,• 
mentioned, 339, 418, 480, 536, 537 

Dinesh Chandra Sen, cited, 191 n., 
337 nn., 338 and n., 408 n., 410 n., 
411 n., 414 n., 415 n. 

Dinkot, 370 

DiodotUvS, satrap, 119 

Dion Cassius, cited, 139 

Dionysios, ambassador from the 
Egyptian coiirt to India, 87 

Dipalpiir, 315, 316 

Diu, 346, 430, 480 

Diwaji, Raja of Sind, 211 

Diwan, Finance Minister : TodarMall 
as, 515 

Diwan-i-am, or Hall of Public Audi- 
ence : at Fatehpur, 478, 500 

Diwan-i-Khas, or Throne Room: at 
Agra, 461 ; at Fatehpur, 473, 478, 
502 

Drama, Indo-Aryan, 158, 192, 264 

Draupadi, wife of the Pandavas, 40 

Dravida: early Aryan intercotirse 
with, 43 ; hardly any trace to be 



found of the life and culture of the 
early cities of, 43 ; the Aryanisa- \, 
tion of, 127-130, 238 ; Aryan 
civilisation completely superseded 
the Dravidian, 128-129 ; early 
commercial relations of, 129-130 ; 
mentioned, 216. See also India, 
Southern 

' Dravidian style,' 246 

Dravidians : the social system of, 9- 
lO; 11-13 ; matriarchy among, 12, 
13 ; their civilisation welded to the 
Aryan, 15, 376 ; made great con- 
tributions to the common Indo- 
Aryan intellectual fund, 32 ; con- 
served Aryan tradition, 227 ; the 
Aryans won military ascendancy 

W over, by means of their horses, 361 

Drink traffic : regulation of, in Patali- 
putra, 79 ; condemned by Manu, 
160 ; liquor and intoxicants for- 
bidden by the Sultan 'Ala-ud-din, 
303. See Alcohol 

Drona, Brahman teacher, 39, 263 

Drona-mukha, central fort of a dis- 
trict, 71 

Duma Lena, temple at EUora, 211 

Durbhanga, 191 n. 

Durga, goddess, 13, 15, 193 

Diirgavati, Rani, of Garrah, 355, 464 

Dushratta, King of the Mitanni, 5, 
41, 119 

Earth-MothUr, 128 

Fcbatana, 75 

Edicts: Asoka's, described, 90-91 ; 
Asoka's, cited, 91, 92, 93, 94, 98, 
102 ; Firuz Shah's were humani- 
tarian, 319-320 

Education : oral methods of, in 
India's Golden Age of culture, 168- 
169 ; Hiuen-Tsang on, 196-198 ; 
the village schools^ 409 ; Akbar 
educated by the traditional oral 
method, 472 

Egypt: evidence of the presence of 
Asoka's Buddhist missionaries in, 
100 ; the sacred lotus of, is really 
an Indian flower, 106 ; early com- 
mercial intercourse of Southern 
India with, 129 ; co-operates with 
Gujerat against the Portuguese, 
346; mentioned, 62, 88, 98, 311 

Eightfold Path, the Aryan, Buddha's 
doctrine : associated with the 
symbolism of the Aryan village, 

553 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



28 ; the Buddha sets out to preach, 
49 ; Asoka enters upon, 92 ; 
Asoka's zeal in pursuing, 102 ; 
mentioned, 51, 57, 89, 97, 144 

Ekbal Khan, claimant to the throne 
of Delhi, 378 

Election to the village assemblies, 
230-233 

Elephant Stables, Vij ay anagar, 406 

Elephanta, temple of : the sculptures 
of, 184, 185, 329 ; mentioned, 211, 
246 

Elliot, Sir H. M., cited, 250 n., 251 n., 
286 w., 287 M., 288 w., 301 n., 302 nn., 
303 nn., 304 n., 305 nn., 307 n., 
308 M., 312W., 3137^., 316W., 319WW., 
322 n., 369 n., 370 n., 373 and nn., 
375 n., 438 nn., 439 nn., 440 nn., 
441 n., 443 w., 445 n., 515 w. 

Ellora : the Vishvakarma Chaitya 
House at, 185-186 ; the Duma 
Lena at, 211 ; the Kailasa temple 
at, 219, 245 ; the Indra Sabha and 
Jagannatha Sabha at, 245 ; men- 
tioned, 246 

Elphinstone, M., cited, 31 n., 252 n. 

Emanuel I of Portugal : embassies 
from, to India, 344, 345 

Epic Age, the, 34 

Epigraphy in Southern India, Report 
on the Progress of, cited, 221 tc. 

Epirus, 95. 98 

Europe: intercourse between India 
and, supposed to have begun with 
Alexander's raid, 60 ; early com- 
mercial intercourse of Southern 
India with, 129 ; Indian culture 
spread over, 254-255 

Fa-HiEN, Chinese pilgrim : his obser- 
vations on Indian life, 160-161, 
165-170, 184, 194, 196 ; his journey 
in India, 165-170 ; mentioned, 185, 
188 

Faizabad, 37 

Faizi, Akbar's counsellor : summoned 
to court, and wins Akbar's friend- 
ship, 471 ; Persian Poet lyaureate, 
473 ; memorial of, at Fatehpur, 
479 ; signatory to the document 
declaring Akbar to be the spiritual 
leader of Islam in India, 496 ; 
death of, 534 ; mentioned, 472, 
494. 498, 503. 504, 518 

Famine : regulations relating to, in 
Chandragupta's system, 81 ; famine 

554 



in Kashmir, recorded by Kalhana, 
274 ; famine of 1033, 290 ; famine- 
preventive measures a recognised 
branch of Hindu traditional polit}'^, 
305 ; famine in the early years of 
Akbar's reign, 451 ; mentioned, 

273, 313. 378 
Faruki dynasty of Khandesh, 356- 

358, 530 

Fatehpur-Sikri : battle near the site 

of, 425 ; Mariam Zamani's palace 

at, 463 ; built by Akbar, and made 

his capital, 470, 473 ; the J ami' 

Masjid at, 463, 470, 471, 480, 492 ; 

the Diwan-i-Khas at, 473, 478, 502 ; 

the Ibadat-Khana at, 474, 496 ; the 

Daftar-Khana at, 476 ; the Diwan- 

i-am at, 478, 500 ; memorials at, 479 ; 

the Buland Darwaza at, 480 ; Akbar 

removes his court from, 509, 520 ; 

the Panch Mahall at, 513 n., 536 ; 

mentioned, 482, 483, 484, 492, 516 

Fath, Abul— see Abul 

Fath Daud, Abul — see Abul 

Fath Khan, son of Firuz Shah, 318, 

320 
Fathabad, or Futtehabad: built by 

Firuz Shah, 320 
Fatima, daughter of Muhammad, 331 
Fazl, Abul — see Abul 
Ferghana, 425, 426 
Fergusson, J . : and the Gupta style 
in architecture, 177-178 ; and the 
' Indo- Aryan style,' 178-179 ; his 
misleading architectural nomencla- 
ture, 216, 217, 315, 329, 336 ; his 
' Chalukyan style,' 245 ; and the 
' Pathan ' style, 283, 294-295 ; on 
the screen of Outb-ud-din's mosque 
at Delhi, 298 ; on the J ami' Masjid 
at Ahmadabad and the Jaina 
temple at Ranpur, 341-342 ; his 
classification of pre-Muhammadan 
architecture, 348 n. ; cited, 20, 
117, 184 n. 
Ferishta : cited, 281 and n., 282 andn., 
283 andn.yiSs and n., 28g,2go andn., 
291, 292, 299 n., 306 «,, 308 n., 309, 
310 and n., 311 nn., 335, 336 nn., 
337. 339 n., 344 n., 350 n.. 352, 
357 >*•« 380 n., 381 and n., 387 and 
nn., 389 n., 390 and n., 392, 393 «., 
394 n., 402, 403, 422, 423, 428. 
448 and n,, 455 n., 467, 469, 482 
Ferries : regulation of, in ancient 
India, 74 ; mentioned, 222 



INDEX 



Firdausi, Persian poet, 282, 283 

Fire regulations in Pataliputra, 79 

First Cause, 46, 55, 214 

Firuz Shah, Delhi Sultan : his reign, 
315-323 ; parentage, 315 ; reli- 
gious principles, 317-318 ; admini- 
strative and other reforms, 319- 
322 ; his organisation of slavery, 
321-322 ; death, 323 ; mentioned, 
331. 332, 333. 335. 367. 378, 394 

Firuz Shah Bahmani, Sultan of the 
Dekhan, 387 

Firuzabad : built by Firuz Shah, 320 ; 
mentioned, 374 

Five Indies, the, 191, 194, 205, 207, 
216, 267, 521 

Five lingams, the, 239, 245 

Five Peoples, the, 34 

Five Rivers, the land of the, 34, 59 

Five Sdstras, 197 

Francis Xavier, St : in India, 365 

Frederick, Caesar, traveller : in India, 
402 

Futtehabad, or Fathabad, 320 

Gahawar clan, 292 
Gama, Vasco da : in India, 344-345 
Gambling : regulation of, in Patali- 
putra, 79-80 ; forbidden by the 
Code of Manu, 160 
Gandhara : the sculpture of the 
Gandhara school, 146, 169; invaded 
by Huns, 173, 176 ; Hiuen-Tsang 
on, 196 ; mentioned, 133, 141, 
186 
Ganesha, god of the Hindu house- 
hold, 114, 502 
Ganga, goddess of the Ganges, 41, 

48 
Ganga Das, Chaitanya s mentor, 411 
Gangd-putras, ' sons of Ganga,' 41 
Gangaikonda-Cholapuram, 243 
Ganges : quinquennial festival at the 
confluence of the Jumna and, 204 ; 
mentioned, 34, 75, 97, 151, 193, 
236, 240, 243, 287, 313, 337, 377, 
412, 432, 433, 466, 484, 485 
Gangoly, O. C, cited, 127 n., 246 
Gangii, Brahman astrologer, 339 
Garbha-griha, or shrine, 116, 182 
Garrah, 355, 464 

Gaur. I. The state : subdued by 
Harsha, 191 ; Buddhism favoured 
in, 266 ; subject to the Delhi 
Sultan, 299, 307, 310, 318 ; trade 
with the west coast, 328 ; breaks 



away from the Delhi Empire, 335 ; 
history of, under independent 
Muhammadan rule, 335-336 ; men- 
tioned, 379. See Bengal. II. The 
city : its architecture, 336-337 ; 
a naval port, 337 ; sacked by Sher 
Khan, 431 ; Humayun at, 432 ; 
occupied for Akbar, 485, 486 ; 
mentioned, 299, 327 
Gautama — see Buddha 
Gaya — see Bodh-Gaya 
Gayatri, mystic formula initiating to 

Brahmanhood, 18 
General Assembly of the Sangha, 53 ; 
at Kanauj, convoked by Harsha, 
202-205, 526 
Geometry an Indo- Aryan invention, 

26 n. 
Georgians, 385, 387 
Ghalib Khan, rebel in Malwa, 352 
Ghats, Western, 131, 339, 345 
Ghdzt, the title, 452 
Ghazi Khan of Badakshan, 504 
Ghazipur district, 173 
Ghaznevide dynasty, 239 ; fall of, 

290 
Ghazni : the Great Mosque of, 282- 
283 ; sacked by Afghans, 291; men- 
tioned, 280, 289, 294, 423 
Ghiyas-ud-din I, or Tughlak. Shah, 
Sultan of Delhi, 291, 309-310, 315- 
316, 347 
Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlak II, 367 
Ghur, 290, 291 
Ghiiri dynasty of Delhi, 291-294, 347 ; 

of Malwa, 347-350 
Giles, H., cited, 167 n. 
Girnar, or Junaghar, 73, 343 
Goa: the Portuguese at, 345, 365, 

380, 389, 396, 397, 473, 498, 499 
Godavari, river, 42, 91, 130, 153, 

236 
Gogunda, battle of, 490 
Goha, Rajput chieftain, 443 
Golconda : the diamond-mines of, 
361 ; Akbar becomes suzerain 
over, 531 ; mentioned, 393, 396, 
400 
Golconda, Jamshid, Shah of, 396 
Gonanda dynasty, 270 
Gopala, King of Bengal, 266, 267 
Gopuram, or temple gateway : the 
origin of, 24, 180 ; mentioned, 

244 
Goswamis, Vaishnava order founded 
by Chaitanya, 419 

555 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Govind Singh, guru, 342 

Govinda, guru, 219 

Gramya-devata, divinity of the vil- 
lage community, 27 

Great Vehicle — see Mahayana 

' Great War,' the, 34, 40, 157, 263 

Greece : commercial intercourse be- 
tween India and, 60-61, 129, 130; 
Islam and the culture of, 256 

Greeks, the race : the Indo- Aryans 
closely related to, 4. See Yavanas 

Green, J. R., cited, 7-8, 52 n. 

Grihya-devata, divinity of the house- 
hold, 27 

Guilds : regulations excluding them 
from the villages, 70-71 ; had their 
own courts, 81 ; the members of, 
recognised no distinction of sect, 
185-186 ; enjoyed self-government, 
223 

Giijar Khan, Afghan chieftain, 485 

Gujerat : conquered by Chandragupta 
II, 164 ; conquered by the Sul- 
tan 'Aia-ud-din, 306 ; becomes an 
independent Muhammadan king- 
dom, 340-341 ; rich in remains of 
Indo-Aryan civilisation, 343 ; rose 
to be one of the most powerful of 
the Musalman kingdoms, 343-344 ; 
attacks the Portuguese settlers, 
345-346 ; conquered by Akbar, 
346, 355, 480-484 ; Marco Polo's 
observations on customs in, 364- 
365 ; risings in, against Akbar, 
509-510, 524 ; mentioned, 191, 
308, 309, 327, 337, 347, 350, 352, 

354. 356, 358.- 364, 378, 379, 387. 
429, 430, 431, 434, 435, 454, 461, 
464, 486, 529 

Gujerati dynasty, 340-346 

Gunas, the three, 136 

Gupta dynasty, 73, 131, 147-178, 
187, 188, 264 

Gupta Empire, the, 147-178 ; the 
Gupta era an Aryan revival, 151- 
152, 178 ; India in Gupta times, 
159-170 ; the empire attenuated, 
175, 187, 188 ; literature and art 
of the Gupta era, 177-186, 242 

Gurdaspur district, 64 

Glirjara clan, 266 

Giiriara, kingdom of, 191, 266, 
267 

Gwalior : captured by Altamsh, 299 ; 
mentioned, 358, 459, 482, 530, 
531 

556 



Gwalior, Raja of, killed at Panipat, 

383 
Gwalior diamond, the, 427 

HadTa Sultana, sister of Ali 'Adil 
Shah of Bijapiir, 401 

Hajipur, 484 

Hakim, Mirza, brother of Akbar: 
rises against Akbar, 466, 509 ; 
death of, 520 

Halebid: captured by 'Ala-ud-din, 
307 ; temples at, 330 

Hall, H. R., cited, 41, 62, 129 n,, 
181 

Hall of the Thousand Columns : sym- 
bolism of, 244 ; mentioned, 340 

Hamida, wife of Humayiin and 
mother of Akbar, 433-436 

Plamir Deva, Rajput chieftain : de- 
fended Rantambhor against 'Ala- 
ud-din, 306 

Hansi, river, 321 

Hanzi, 290 

Hardwar, 377 

Harishena, poet, 152, 158 

Harivamsa, the, 499 

Harsha, King of Kashmir, 26S, 274 

Harsha-Vardhana of Thaneshar : 
events leading up to his accession, 
188-189 ; nominated king, 190 ; 
a pious Buddhist, and adhered to 
the Mahayana school, 190, 202 ; 
supreme ruler in Aryavarta, 191 ; 
his capital Kanauj, 191 ; his lite- 
rary and dramatic works, 191-192 ; 
summons Hiuen-Tsang to his court, 
201 ; his regard for Hiuen-Tsang, 
201, 204, 206, 220 ; Hiuen-Tsang 
on his character and his admini- 
stration, 201-202 ; his great Bud- 
dhist Assembly at Kanauj, 202- 
204, 207, 526 ; his great festival at 
' the Place of Alms,' 204—206 ; art 
during his reign, 211 ; death, 212, 
247 ; the break-up of his empire 
and its consequences for India, 247- 
250, 257, 260 ; sent a mission to 
China, 247-248 ; mentioned, 196, 
200, 208, 210, 266, 267, 269, 521, 
525 

Harshakarita, epic, 192 

Harun - al - Raschid, 254, 255, 279, 

307 
Hasan, Shiah martyr, 331 
Hasan Gangii Bahmani, or Brahmani, 

Sultan of Kulbarga, 339 



INDEX 



Hashtinapur, 40 

Hegira, the, 208 

Hellenism, India and, 141 . See Greece 

Hemn, aspirant for the throne of 
Delhi, 446 ; proclaimed sovereign, 
451 ; defeated by Akbar and put 
to death, 452 

Heracleitus of Bphesus, 60 

Herat, 67, 290, 375 

Hermitages of the Ajivikas, in the 
Barabar hills, 91, 106-107 

Herodotus, 62 

Himalaya, deity, 7, 29 

Himalaj^as : the Aryan migration into 
India chiefly took place through, 
4 ; the environment of, gave Indo- 
Aryan thought its special cha- 
racter, 7 ; the effect of, as a 
physical barrier, upon the empire 
of Aryavarta, 258 ; mentioned, 
286, 525 

Hinayana, or Little Vehicle : its 
development helped by the art of 
the craftsmen, 138 ; too austere 
for an emotional people, 141 ; 
Southern India became the strong- 
hold of, 1 41-142, 217 ; the archi- 
tecture of the school becomes more 
free, 146 ; flourished in Ceylon, 
154 ; the members of, lived amic- 
ably with Mahayanists, 166, 198 ; 
Hinayana monasteries in Persia, 
210 ; atisterity of, appealed more 
to the Arabs than the exuberant 
symbolism of the Mahayana school, 
210 ; the cleavage between the 
Hinayana and Mahayana parties 
in the Sangha, 214 ; the new 
Saiva party grew out of the 
school, 214, 216 ; Sankaracharya's 
blow to the prestige of, 220 ; 
kept its hold on the South, 325 ; 
mentioned, 167, 190, 192, 198, 
202 

Hindal, Mirza, brother of Humayun, 
432, 433, 447 

Hindu Kush, 250, 370 

Hinduism : the two main groups of 
modern, 29, 42, 148 ; absorbed the 
Dravidian pantheon, 128 ; Bud- 
hism merged in, 148, 170 ; a syn- 
thesis of Indian religious thought, 
157 ; the varying relation of Bud- 
dhism to, 170 ; Islam spiritually 
at one with, 210 ; protected by 
Firuz Shah, 317 ; the purging in- 



fluence of Islam upon, 324-325. 
489 ; the results of the impact of 
Islam upon, 326-331 ; the struggle 
between Islam and, had a political 
and sociological rather than a 
religious basis, 403-406 ; the ritual 
of the DIn-Ilahi borrowed from, 
518 

Hindus : in the Muhammadan army 
of Gaur, 336 ; persecuted by 
Sikandar Lodi, 380 ; Akbar's con- 
siderate treatment of, 515-516 ; 
their attitude to the Din-Ilahi, 518 ; 
their social and political position 
under Akbar, 525 

Hindiistan : — the Aryavarta of the 
Mahabharata, 152 ; Babur's de- 
scription of, 421-422, 424 

Hissar, river, 321 

Hissar Firuza, 320 

Hiuen-Tsang, Chinese pilgrim : his 
account of his visit to India, 192- 
207 ; Harsha's esteem for, 201, 
204, 206, 220 ; on Harsha's cha- 
racter and his rule, 201-202 ; at 
Harsha's great Assembly at Kan- 
auj, 203-204 ; at the festival at 
' the Place of Alms,' 204-206 ; on 
the civilisation of the South, 237 ; 
mentioned, 144, 188, 190, 191, 
192, 210, 212, 219, 220, 247-248, 
269 

Horse : the important part played 
by, in Indian political history, 361- 
362 ; the demand for horses made 
a ground for legalising piracy, 363 ; 
part of the cargo of every ship 
coming from the West, 364 

Horse sacrifice: Pushy amitra's 120- 
121, 122, 124 ; Samudragupta's, 
153 ; mentioned, 150 

' Horseshoe ' window, in Asokan 
architecture, 114 ; the ' horseshoe ' 
arch in Muslim architecture de- 
veloped from, 254 

Houses, the early Indo-Aryan, built 
of wood, 1 1 5-1 16 

Hoysala Ballala dynasty, 307 

Hughli, river, 485 

Humayiin: with Babur at Panipat, 
383 ; given a peshkesh by the royal 
family of Gwalior, 384 ; Babur's 
sacrifice for, 426-427 ; character, 
428, 448-449 ; his struggle for his 
throne, 429-436 ; defeated by Sher 
Khan at Buxar and at Kanauj, 

557 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



432-433 ; a refugee, 433-436, 445, 
447 ; regains his throne, 447-448 ; 
death, 448 ; his mausoleum at 
Delhi, 449 ; mentioned, 354, 450, 
451. 455, 458, 459, 484, 485. 
536 

Huns, in India, 173-177, 193 

Hunting: forbidden by the Code of 
Manu, 160 ; Akbar and, 479 

Husain Shah, Sultan of Jaunpur, 
337-338, 379, 380, 410, 459, 520, 
521 

Husain Arghiin, Sultan of Sind, 435, 

436 
Husain Nizam Shah, Sultan of 

Ahmadnagar, 398, 399-402, 403 
Husain, Shiah martyr, 331 
Hushang Ghiiri, Sultan of Malwa, 

341, 347. 348-350 
Hushangabad, 350 
Hushkapura, 144 
Huvishka, Kushan emperor, 144, 

269 
Hydaspes, river, 64. See Jhilam 
Hydraotes, river, 64. See Ravi 
Hyphasis, river, 64, 66. See Bias 

Ibadat-Khana, or Debating Hall, 
Akbar' s, 474, 496, 500, 503, 511 

Ibn Batuta, traveller, 312 

Ibrahim 'Adil Shah I, Sultan of 
Bijapiir, 394-398, 399 

Ibrahim 'Adil Shah II of Bijapur, 
390, 392, 528, 531 

Ibrahim I,odi, Sultan of Delhi, 381- 
383, 384, 429, 430 ; defeated by 
Babur at Panipat, 382-383 

Ibrahim Nizam Shah, Sultan of 
Ahmadnagar, 528 

Ibrahim Qutb Shah, Sultan of Gol- 
conda, 396, 400, 401 

Ibrahim Shah Sharki, Sultan of 
Jaunpur, 350, 378 

Ibrahim Husain, Mirza, rebel leader, 
481-482 

Idar, 341 

Ideals of Indian Art, cited, 245 n. 

Images : the worship of, rejected by 
Ar5'an religious symbolism, 117 ; 
the use of, in architecture, aban- 
doned by Hindu craftsmen, 342- 
343 ; Marco Polo on Indian image- 
worship, 364 

India : the history of, as distinguished 
from that of Aryavarta, begins with 
Asoka's reign, 89 ; the influence of 



Asoka's Buddhist propaganda in, 
100 ; the influence of Buddhism 
on, 126 ; origin of the name, 192 ; 
at the pinnacle of her greatness at 
the time of the Arab invasion, 253 ; 
her spiritual quest the source of 
her greatness and her weakness, 
258 ; her intellectual empire re- 
tained, 408 

India, Central : under suzerainty of 
the Huns, 175 

India, Northern : the beginning of the 
influence of the South in, 127 ; 
under the Kushan power, 139 ; the 
influence of the Hun and other 
barbarian invasions upon, 176 ; 
the sikhara in, 179, 217 ; temple 
architecture of, 216-217 ; the 
Muhammadan conquest of, 299 et 
seq. ; mentioned, 168, 191 

India, North-western : the renowned 
universities of, 255 

India, Southern : Asoka sends mis- 
sions to, 95 ; the Aryanisation of, 
127 et seq. ; stronghold of Hina- 
yana Buddhism, 141-142 ; the last 
stronghold of Aryan India against 
Islam, 142 ; history of, from the 
seventh to the eleventh centuries, 
212-241 ; the rise and progress of 
Saivism in, 213-220 ; temple archi- 
tecture of, 216-217 ; the Indo- 
Aryan codes of law observed in, 
226-227 ; art in, from the seventh 
to the eleventh centuries, 242-246 ; 
indifferent to the Muhammadan 
conquest of Northern India, 300 ; 
invaded by the Sultan 'Ala-ud- 
din, 307 ; Aryan culture gained an 
impetus in, as a result of the 
Muhammadan invasions of Hindu- 
stan, 325 ; Marco Polo's observa- 
tions in, 359-363 ; mentioned, 154, 
191, 196, 212. See also Dekhan 
and Dravida 

India, Western, 164, 245, 257 

Indian Architecture, cited, 297 «., 
406 n. 

' Indo-Aryan style/ 178-179 

Indra, the Thunder-god : the southern 
gate in the Aryan village dedicated 
to, 27 ; attributes of, 28 ; gate 
dedicated to, in Pataliputra, 77 ; 
the holy mount of , 1 1 1 ; supplanted 
by Vishuti-Surya as the patron 
deity of Aryan royalty, 112 ; an 



INDEX 



invocation to, to facilitate the 
removal of a house, 115 ; men- 
tioned, 4, 193 

Indra III, Rashtrakuta king, 266 

Indra Sabha, at Ellora, 245 

Indraprastha, 40, 263 

Indrayudha, King of Kanauj, 267 

Indu, a name of Aryavarta, 34 

Indus, the, 4, 38, 63, 64, 65, 67, 123, 
124, 125, 142, 154, 250, 271, 285, 
370. 382 

Inquisition, instituted by the Jesuits 
at Goa, 380 

Iron Pillar, at Delhi, 164 

Irrigation : regard paid to, in ancient 
India, 73 ; great irrigation works 
in Rajputana in the pre-Muham- 
madan period, 265 ; Lalitaditya's 
work, 271 ; Suyya's irrigation 
works in Kashmir, 273-274 ; Firuz 
Shah's great canal, 321 

Ishta-devata, the divinity of the self, 
27, 41 

Ishvara, the Supreme Deity : the 
Three Aspects of, 136 ; mentioned, 

239. 307- 327 
Ishvara Purl, Chaitanya's guru, 414 
Islam : the soil prepared for, by the 
Buddhist missions, 100 ; its socio- 
logical programme the real reason 
for its progress in India, 209 ; 
spiritually at one with Hinduism, 
210 ; India its adopted home- 
land, 242, 256 ; early proselytis- 
ing methods in India, 251 ; the 
Arab conquest of Sind profoundly 
affected Islamic culture, 252-253 ; 
the crescent, the ensign of, bor- 
rowed from India, 254 ; absorbed 
Indo-Aryan culture, and was the 
medium for its distribution through 
Europe, 254-255 ; the reasons for 
its success in India, 257-258 ; the 
history of, in its first centuries, 
279-280 ; Mahmud of Ghazni's 
victories helped the progress of, 
289 ; the progress of, in India, 
arrested, 290 ; its followers not 
concerned with the arts of peace, 
296 ; its primitive doctrine ex- 
panded by the working upon it of 
Indian religious thought, 307- 
308 ; Hindu polity contrasted with 
that of Islam, 322-323 ; the purg- 
ing influence of Islam upon Hindu- 
ism, 324-325, 489 ; the results of 



the impact of Islam upon Hindu- 
ism, 326-331 ; did not alter Indian 
aesthetic principles,but gave Indian 
art a new impulse, 329-330 ; Islam 
in India spiritually and intellectu- 
ally isolated from the rest of the 
Muhammadan world, 330-331 ; the 
Sunni and Shiah sects of, 331-334 ; 
the struggle between Islam and 
Hinduism had a sociological and 
political rather than a religious 
basis, 403-406 ; racial prejudices 
rather than sectarian differences 
produced the conflicts between the 
Musaknan rulers, 403-404, 405 ; 
Islam an individualistic cult, and 
effect of this on the political 
system, 404-406, 429, 445 ; the 
effect of the political creed of 
Islam upon Indian social life, 405- 
406 ; did not alter the course of 
life in the villages or spiritually 
affect the bulk of the Indian 
population, 407-409 ; the soul of 
India and her intellectual empire 
preserved against the Islamic in- 
vasion, 408 ; the position of Islam 
among the world-religions due to 
its adoption of Indo-Aryan culture, 
489 ; Akbar's faithful adherence 
to, 492-493, 494-495 ; Akbar 
assumes the leadership of Islam in 
India, 503-506 ; Islam refused to 
recognise the Aryan land system, 
507 ; the Dln-Ilahi, 511-519; Ak- 
bar's great work for, 537 
Islam Shah — see Sallm Shah 
Ismail Shah of Persia: sends an 

embassy to Ahmadabad, 344 
Ismail Shah, Sultan of Berar, 

395 
Ismail' Adil Shah I, Sultan of Bijapiir, 

390-394, 399 
Ismail Nizam Shah, Sultan of Ah- 

madnagar, 528 
Itimad Khan, chief eunuch at Akbar's 

court, 479 
Itimad Khan, minister at the court 

of Gujerat, 480-481 
Ittila, Brahman, cursed Jayapida, 

272 

Jadunaxh Sarkar, cited, 411 n., 
415 n., 416 n., 417 n., 419 n. 

Jagannath Mishra, father of Chai- 
tanya, 410, 411 

55Q 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Jagannath temple at Purl, 417 

Jagannatha Sabha, at EUora, 245 

Jagirs, or tuyiil lands, 506-507 

Jahan Husain Quli, Khan, 483-484, 
486 

Jahangir : despised the Dln-Ilahi, 
518, 527 ; mentioned, 463 and n., 
^'Z'Z. See Salim, Prince 

Jai Mall, Raja,. 463-464, 468 

Jaichand, Raja of Kanauj, 292 and 
n., 293 

Jaidev, religious teacher, 342 

Jainlsm, 58-59 ; affinity of, with 
Buddhism, 59 ; essentially a demo- 
cratic movement, 99 ; favoured by 
Asoka, 99 ; the stupa part of the 
symbolism of, no, in ; had much 
influence in the South, 131 ; not 
hindered by the Guptas, 156 ; the 
mutual tolerance of Jainism, Brah- 
manism, and Buddhism, 185 ; 
Hiuen-Tsang's reference to, 196 ; 
Jain temples in Southern India, 
244-245 ; defeated by Sankara- 
charya in the South, 325 ; men- 
tioned, 148, 237 

Jains, or Nigranthas, 58, 91, 130 ; 
Marco Polo's observations on the 
Jains of Gujerat, 365 

Jaipal, Raja of IvahorC; 281, 284 

Jajnagar, 348, 350 

Jaial Khan, son of Sher Shah: 
succeeds as Salim Shah, 445 

Jalal Khan Lodi, brother of Sultan 
Ibrahim I,odi, 381 

Jalal-ud-din, Stiltan of Delhi, 300- 
301 

Jalal-ud-din, Sultan of Gaur, 335- 

336 
Jalala, Afghan leader, 524 
Jalauka, ruler of Kashmir, 268 
Jalwara, 358 
J ambukeshvaram temple, Trichino- 

poly, 239 n. 
J ami' Masjid : at Ghazni, 282-283 ; 

at Jaunpur, 337 ; at Ahmadabad, 

341-342 ; at Mandu, 348 ; at 

Fatehpur-Sikri, 463, ^170, 471, 480, 

492 
Japan: Buddhism in, 210, 220 
Jaroka window in the palace at 

Fatehpur, 516 
Jarrett, H. S., cited, 472 n., 476 n., 

493 nn., 494, 495 n., 502 n., 519 n. 
Jatakas, 'birth stories' of the 

Buddha, 107, 135 

560 



Jats, tribe, 32, 251 

Jauhdr, holocaust of Rajput women, 

372, 464 

J aunpur : founded by Firuz Shah, and 
famous as a seat of learning, 320 ; 
a centre of Muhammadan culture 
under the Sharki dynasty, 337, 
339 ; the J ami' Masjid and other 
architecture at, 337 ; conquered 
by Sultan Behlol Lodi of Delhi, 
379; mentioned, 350, 378, 381,431, 
432, 459, 460, 484, 509 

Java: Indian intercourse with, 145 ; 
Fa-Hien in, 170 

Jaxartes, river, 125 

Jaya Chandel, Rajput chieftain, 

443 

Jaya siambha — see Towers of Vic- 
tory 

Jayapida, King of Kashmir, 272 

Jesuits: set up an Inquisition at 
Goa, 380 ; Akbar's tolerance to, 
473-474, 495 ; on Akbar's re- 
ligious belief, 495, 499 ; at Akbar's 
court, 498-499, 501 ; mentioned, 
536 

Jhalawar, 341 

Jhilam, river, 64, 370, 442 

Jinas, in Mahavira's system, 58- 

59 

Jitmal, ruler of Bengal under the 
name of Jalal-ud-din, 335-336 

Jiva, the, in Mahavira's system, 58 

Jizya, or poll-tax : reimposed on 
Brahmans by Firuz Shah, 317 ; 
abolished by Akbar, 465 ; men-^ 
tioned, 251, 296, 322, 507 

Jndna-marga, the way of knowledge : 
a philosophical ideal, 108 ; the 
basis of Saiva philosophy, 113 ; 
mentioned, 136 

Jodh Bai's palace, at Fatehpur, 
463 n. 

Jodhpur, 434, 482 

Jumna, river: quinquennial festival 
held at the confluence of the 
Ganges and, 204 ; mentioned, 97, 
151, 286, 304, 313, 321, 373, 

374 

Junaghar — see Girnar 

Justice, administration of : under 
Chandragupta's government, 80- 
81 ; Asoka and, 94-95 ; reference 
to, by Fa-Hien, 166 ; the Sukrd- 
nitisdra on, 226 ; the village 
gssemblies took part in, 230 



INDEX 



Kab!r, Hindu teacher, 342, 380 
Kabul: in the Asokan Empire, 124; 
part of the Ghaznevide Umpire, 
291 ; won by Babur, 381 ; Babur 
bujried at, 427 ; Humayiin at, 447, 
448, 450 ; Akbar's enemies in, 466 ; 
rebels against Akbar, and submits, 
509, 520; mentioned, 67, 139, 271, 
281, 370, 377, 382, 423, 426, 433, 
451, 521, 524 
Kadaram, 240 

Kadphises I, Kushan emperor, 142 
Kadphises II, Kushan emperor, 142 
Kai-Kubad M'uizz-ud-din, Sultan of 

Delhi, 300 
Kailasa, Mount : Siva's hermitage, 

III ; mentioned, 184, 326 
Kailasa temple, EHora, 219, 245 
Kailasanatha temple, Conjeveram, 

243 
Kalahasti temple. North Arkot, 239 n. 
Kalamos, sophist, 140 
Kalanjar, 444, 469 
Kalhana, historian, 268, 269, 270, 

271, 273, 274, 275, 499 
Kali age, 45 
Kahdasa, dramatist, 121, 158, 164, 

177 
Kahnga: conquered by Asoka, 91, 

123 ; lost by Pushyamitra, 123 ; 

part of the Chola Empire, 240 ; 

mentioned, 120, 153, 170 
Kaliya, water-demon, 273 
Kalkin, Vishnu's tenth avatar, 45, 

55 n. 
KalUan, 397, 400 
Kalmuks, 385 

Kalugamalai, temple of, 245 
Kamala-Vardhana, usurper, 274-275 
Kamarupa : Hiuen-Tsang in, 200 ; 

Muhammad ibn Bakhtiyar at- 
tempted the conquest of, 299. 

See also Assam 
Kambodia: Indian intercourse with, 

„ 145 
Kdmilu-t Tawdnkh, cited, 288 n. 
Kamran, Mirza, brother of Huma- 
yun, 432, 433, 435, 436, 447, 450 

; Kanaka Sabhd of the Chidambaram 
temple, 238 

1 Kanakasabhai, V., 228 n. 

! Kanauj : Harsha's capital, 191 ; Har- 
sha's great Buddhist Assembly at, 
202—205, 207, 526 ; conquered by 
Nagabhata, 265-266,267 ; Panchala 
a name of, 266 ; sacked by Mahmud 



of Ghazni, 266, 287; captured by 
Afghans, 293, 294; battle of, be- 
tween Sher Shah and Humayun, 
433. 435. 437. 445, 44^; mentioned, 
37, 189, 191 n., 201, 202, 212, 220, 
248, 264, 292, 327, 337, 378, 438 

Kanchi (Kanchipiira), or Conjeve- 
ram, 153, 237, 239 and n., 242, 326, 
408 

Kandahar: taken by Sabuktagin, 
280; the infant Akbar carried off 
to, 436 ; taken by Humayiin, 447 ; 
gained by Akbar, 527 ; mentioned, 

433. 435 

Kanha, or Krishna, Andhra king, 
130 

Kanheri, the Assembly Hall at, 146 

Kanishka, Kushan emperor : his 
reign, 142-144 ; Asoka sometimes 
confused with, 142 ; mentioned, 
139, 145, 150, 154, 169, 186, 269 

Kans, Raja, 335 

Kanva dynasty, 124, 131 

Kanyakubja, or Kanauj — see Kanauj 

Kapila, sage, 46 

Kapilavastu: the Buddha's birth- 
place, 46 ; Asoka at, 97 ; desolate, 
in Pa-Hien's time, 166 

Karan Rai, Raja of Gujerat, 308 

Karikala, Chola king, 236 

Karkota dynasty, 270-272, 274 

Karle, the Chapter-house at, 107, 133 

Karma, doctrine of : in the philosophy 
of Mahavira, 58 ; the Vedic and 
Buddhist theories of, 58 ; Manu on, 
163 ; mentioned, 195 

Karma-marga, way of work : philo- 
sophical ideal, 108; the sikhara a 
symbol of, 245; mentioned, 136 

Karnavati, 341. See Ahmadabad 

Karpura-manjuri, drama, 264 

Karra, 300, 301 

Karttikeya, or Senapati, the War- 
god: the Mangalavithi dedicated 
to, 24 ; the northern gate in the 
Aryanvillage dedicated to, 27; gate 
in Patahputra dedicated to, 77 ; 
presided over the lunar mansions, 
27 n. 

Karuvaki, consort of Asoka, 103 

Kashgar, 139 

Kashiprasad Jayaswal, cited, 82 n. 

Kashmir : one of the three areas to 
which the Aryan race was mostly 
confined, 32 ; iinder the Kushan 
power, 139 ; early history of the 

N 561 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



state, 267-275 ; Mahmud of Ghazni 
invades, 286 ; Timur makes a raid 
into, 377 ; conquered by Akbar, 
521, 522 ; mentioned, 143, 144, 
175, 266 

Kashmir, History of, Kalhana's, 499 

Kasi, Aryan kingdom, 38 

Kassites, an Aryan race : conquered 
Babylon, 4 

Katch, province : annexed by Akbar^ 

524 

Kathaks, village story-tellers, 155 

Kathiawar, or Surashtra : invaded by 
Turki nomads, 125 ; conquered by 
Chandragupta II, 164 ; gains in- 
dependence, 187 ; annexed by 
Akbar, 524 ; mentioned, 188, 287 

Kaula Devi, wife of Sultan 'Ala-ud- 
din, 308 

Kauravas : the struggle between the 
Pandavas and, 40-41, 263, 292 ; sup- 
posed to be descendants of Chandra, 

41 

Kautiliya, name of Chanakya : men- 
tioned, 68-81, 105, 160, 161, 165, 
227. See Chanakya and Kautiliya- 
artha-Sastra 

Kautiltya-artha-Sdstra, Hindu code: 
Chanakya the reputed author of, 
67 ; what it is, 68, 70 ; upholds the 
principles of the Aryan constitu- 
tion, 68 ; on republican govern- 
ment, 69 ; a just and liberal code, 
69-70; on the Aryan village, 27, 70- 
71, 77 ; controlled guilds and simi- 
lar organisations, 70-71 ; on roads, 
71-72 ; on water-supply, 72-73 ; on 
navigation, 75 ; on the planning of 
the royal city, 76-77 ; on co-opera- 
tion, 77 ; on drink traffic and gam- 
bling, 79 ; on the rearing and care 
of live-stock, 80; on famine pro- 
tection, 81; cited, 34W., 35«., i6on.; 
mentioned, 150, 221. 222, 228 

Kaviri, river, 236 

Kaviripaddinam, 236 

Kedarnath, monastery, 220 

Kehrla, 349 

Kenheri, 107 

Kerala, or Chera, dynasty, 43,129, 236 

Keralaputra kingdom, 95, 212 

Keshava Kashmiri, pandit, 413 

Khaibar Pass, 524 

Khajuraho, temple of, 180, 265 

Khalif ate: Muhammad Tughlak recog- 
nised the temporal supremacy of, 

562 



310-311, 331 ; Muhammadans in 
India practically independent of, 
330-331 ; the Sunni and Shiah 
sects differ with regard to the 
succession to, 331 
Khalisa demesne, 262 
Khan Bab a, or Protector, Bairam 

Khan's title, 450 
Khan Khanan — see Mun'im Khan 
Khan Khanan, the office of, 510 
Khan-i-'Alam, general, 485 
Khan-i-'Azam — see 'Azam Khan 

Kokah 
Khandakhddyaka, 255 
Khandesh : becomes an independent 
Musalman kingdom, 340 ; early 
history of, 355-358 ; annexed by 
Akbar, 358, 530-531 ; mentioned, 
347. 352, 460 
Khandesh dynasty, 356, 358 
Kharavela, King of Kalinga, 131 
Kharvdtika, central fort of a district, 

71 
Khattris, Aryan tribe, 32 
Khilji dynasty of Delhi, 300-309 ; of 

Malwa, 350-354 
Khizr Khan, son of the Sultan 'Ala- 

ud-dln, 308 
Khizr Khan, Timur' s viceroy in 

Delhi, 376, 378, 379 
Khotan, 139 

Khur-lakur, or war-tax, 262 
Khurasan, 210, 280, 285, 287 
Khurram, son of Jahangir, 534. See 

Shah Jahan 
Khusru, eldest son of Jahangir, 534, 

535. 536 
Khusru Turk, 392. See Asad Khan 
Kliutba, the, prayer for the sovereign, 

311, 383, 399 ; read by Akbar, 

503-504, 509 
Khwaja KuUan, one of Babur's 

officers, 423 
Khwaja Sultan, 508 
Kika, Rana, of Mewar (Partab 

Singh), 490-491 
Kingship : the Aryan idea of, 35-37, 

82-83, 512 ; succession to, 90, 189, 

248 ; the Code of Manu on, 161 ; 

the Indo- Aryan king took rank 

as a Kshatriya, 180, 191, 195 ; 

Hiuen-Tsang on, 195 ; the Sukrd- 

nitisdra on, 224 ; the village 

assemblies and the power of the i 

king, 227-229 ; Indian monarchy 

of the pre-Muhammadan period not 



INDEX 



a despotism, 235 ; the beneJ&cent 
Indo-Aryan tradition of kingship, 
243 ; the kingship under Hindu 
and under Islamic poHty con- 
trasted, 322-323 ; Akbar's views 
on, 502 ; Akbar declares himself 
spiritual as well as temporal head 
of his empire, 503-504 ; Islamic 
theory of the right of the king 
over the person and property of 
the subject, 507 ; Hindu eras 
fixed from the consecration of 
certain kings, 514 w. 
Kirat Singh, Raja of Kalanjar, 444 
Koh-i-Nur, famous diamond, 384 
Koppam, battle of, 241 
Kosala, Aryan kingdom, 37 
Kottam, administrative division, 234 
Krishna, Universal Lord : guru of 
the Pandavas, 15, 41 ; aids the 
Pandavas, 40 ; represented as the 
guru of the Pandavas and Kau- 
ravas, 42 ; the national hero of 
the Aryan revival of the Gupta 
period, 155, 178; taught by Arjtina, 
188 ; connected with Eternity, or 
Narayana, 415 n.; his colour 
symbol, 415 n.; mentioned, 172, 
173. 185, 338, 408, 414, 415, 417, 418 
Krishna, or Kanha, King of the 

Andhra state, 130 
Krishna-Rajal, Rashtrakiita king, 219 
Krishna III, Rashtrakiita king, 239 
Krishna Rai, Raja of Vijayanagar, 

385-387 

Krishna, river, 91, 130, 153, 339, 401 

Krishna-Chaitanya name adopted 
by Chaitanya, 417 

Krishnasami Aiyar, C. N., cited 
7.2.0 n. 

Krishnaswami Aiyangar, S., cited, 
127 n., 234 nn., 237 n. 

Kshatriyas : the Indo-Aryan military 
caste, 8, 16 ; originally the purest 
Aryan stock, but gradually lost 
their precedence to the Brahmans, 

I 17, 39-40 ; their status and duties, 
20-21 ; penalty upon, for theft, 
21 ; Kshatriya thinkers generally 
adhered to the Vaishnava school, 
31 ; theoretically the Aryan king 
should be chosen from the class 
of. 35 ; Vishnu-Siirya their pat- 
ron deity, 41 ; the Buddha's 
teaching acceptable to, 51 ; wor- 
shipped the Buddha as Vishnu- 



Narayana, 109 ; assert their right 
to govern, vested in the class by 
Aryan tradition, 151 ; rules govern- 
ing marriage of, laid down in the 
Code of Manu, 159 ; kingship a 
prerogative of the class, 161 ; 
descendants of Hun and Turki 
invaders admitted to the caste, 
176 ; the spiritual leaders of the 
Aryan tribes, 182 ; not bound 
to render military service, 195 ; 
Hiuen-Tsang on, 196 ; the Sukrd- 
nitisdra on the Kshatriya, 222 ; 
the efficiency of the caste for 
national defence impaired by Bud- 
dhism, 260 ; mentioned, 33 

Kulbarga. I. The state : breaks 
from the Delhi Empire, 339. II. 
The city : the royal mosque at, 
340 ; loses its position as capital 
of the Dekhan, 340 ; becomes part 
of the Bijapiir possessions, 396 ; 
mentioned, 393, 395 

Kumal Khan, regent of Bijapur, 390- 
391, 392, 393 

Kumara, or Bhaskaravarma, King of 
Kamariipa: Hiuen-Tsang at the 
court of, 200-201 ; at Harsha's 
great Assembly at Kanauj, 203 ; 
takes leave of Hiuen-Tsang, 206 ; 
mentioned, 196, 249 

Kumara Devi, wife of Chandragupta 
Gupta I, 149, 151 

Kumaragupta, Gupta emperor, 171- 
172 

Kumbha, Rana of Chitor, 296 n., 341 

344 

Kunala, son of Asoka, 103 

Kundalavana, monastery, 143 

Kural of Tiruvalluvar, 237 

Kurukshetra, battle of, 40, 188, 263 

Kushan country, 169 

Kushan dynasty, 138-139, 142-145, 
150, 175 

Kushan Empire : the rise of the 
Kushan power helped Buddhist 
propaganda, 131 ; the progress of 
Mahayana Buddhism identified 
with the growth of the Kushan 
political power, 138, 140-141, 142; 
history of the empire, 138-139, 
142-145 ; art of the Kushan 
period, 142-146 

Kushans, or Yueh-chi, Turki nomads : 
advance towards India, 125, 138; 
may have received Asoka's Bud- 



563 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



dhist missionaries, 125 ; mentioned, 

149, 176 
Kushrau II, King of Persia, 213 
Kusinagara : the Buddha died at, 57, 

117 ; Asoka makes a pilgrimage to, 

97 

Kutayudha -watiare, 173, 226 
Kuvalayapida, King of Kashmir, 272 

Lahore : becomes Akbar's capital, 
509, 520 ; mentioned, 290, 291, 
377. 433. 448- 451. 456, 500, 509 

I/ake Beautiful, the, at Girnar, 73 

Lakhnauti, or Gaur, capital of Gaur, 
299, 327, 336. See Gaur 

lyakhsman Sen, Raja of Bihar, 294 

Lakshman, half-brother of Rama, 42 

I^akshmi, goddess of the day, 7, 28, 
114, 130, 184 

Lalitaditya Muktapida, King of 
Kashmir, 271-272, 273 

Lalitapida, King of Kashmir, 272 

Lalla, courtesan, 275 

Land : communal holding of, in the 
early Dravidian social system, 12 ; 
the freeman the holder of, in the 
Aryan system, 38 ; the land was 
the people's, according to Aryan 
tradition, 80 ; the quinquennial 
redistribiition of the communal 
lands, 204 ; the lands except royal 
domains belonged to the village 
assemblies, 228-229 ; land-tax, 85, 
234 ; land-holding in the Rajput 
states, 261-262 ; the Hindu land 
system prevailed to a great extent 
in the Musalman kingdom of 
Gujerat, 343 ; Sher Shah's method 
of collecting the land revenue, 438- 
439. 515 ; Akbar's early reforms 
in the land revenue system, 479, 
515 ; Todar Mall's land revenue 
reforms, 487-488 ; Akbar and the 
administration of the Crown lands, 
506-508 ; Islam refused to recog- 
nise the Aryan land sj'stem, 507 

I/anguage : of the countryside, re- 
mained unchanged through the 
periods of conquest and foreign rule, 
408. See also Persian and Sanskrit 

Law : Asoka and the administration 
of, 94-95. See Justice 

Layard, Sir A. H., cited, 113, 182 

' Letters of victory,' 413, 415 

Lichchavi clan, 149, 151 

Lilaivati, the, 499 



564 



Lingam, the: Siva's emblem, 217, 
289 ; the ' five lingams,' 239, 245 

Liquor traffic — see Drink traffic 

Literature : the Kshatriya class con- i 
tributed largely to sacred Utera- !j 
ture, 20 ; the Sanskrit renaissance • 
of the Gupta age : the Bhagavad 
Gild, the Mahdhhdrata, etc., 154- 
155. 157-158' 177 ; the classical 
age of Tamil Hterature, 237 ; the 
Sangam, a body of critics, 237 ; 
the centuries immediately preced- 
ing the Muhammadan conquest 
were rich in, 264 ; Husain Shah's 
work for, 337-338 ; Akbar's interest 
in, 473. 499-500 

Little Vehicle — see Hinayana 

Lodi dynasty, 379-381 

Lohara, fortress, 286 

Lotus : as symbol in Indian art and 
literature, 106, 108, 112, 113, 114, 
180, 184, 326 

Lowe, W. H., cited, 475 n., 491 «., 
494 nn., 500 n., 501 n., 505 n., 
512 n., 525 n. 

Lucknow Museum, 153 

Lumbini Garden, traditional scene of 
the Buddha's birth, 97 

Maabar, province, 359, 360, 361 

MacCrindle, J. W., cited, 140 n. 

Macedonia, 95, 98 

Madhyadesa, or Middle Country, 34, 
40, 59, 160, 226 

Madras Museum, 245, 246 

Madura : a centre of literary culture 
in the South, 237 ; captured by 
'Ala-ud-din, 307 ; mentioned, 218, 
230, 238 

Magadha, Aryan kingdom, afterwards j 
called Bihar : known as ' the Land 
of Monasteries,' loi ; loses its | 
position as the paramount Indo- 
Aryan state, 124 ; Fa-Hien on, | 
165, 169 ; the spiritual centre of 
Mahayana Buddhism, 169 ; men- 
tioned, 37, 59, 60, 66, 67, 83, 115, 
119, 120, 123, 129, 130, 131, 177, 
199, 249, 266-267. See also Bihar 

Magas, King of Cyrene, 98 

Magi, 62 

Maha-sabha, or Great Assembly, 228, 
229. See Assemblies 

Mahdbhdrata : the main plot of, 40 ;^ 
the distinction between the Rdtnd- 
yana and, 41-42 ; the Rdmdyana 



INDEX 



probably older than, as an epic, 

42 ; belongs to Kshatriya litera- 
ture, 42 ; hardly any trace can be 
found of the cities mentioned in, 

43 ; the Bhagavad Gtta in, 155 ; 
its origin, its purpose, and its 
influence in moulding Indian na- 
tional character, 157 ; and king- 
ship, 161 ; translated into Bengali, 
337 ; familiar to the masses, 338 ; 
translated into Persian, 499 ; men- 
tioned, 34, 35, 36 n., 37, 39, 91, 
121, 128, 152, 159, 177, 178, 185, 
188, 227 «., 236, 263, 326, 376, 408, 
459, 500 

Mahadeva, supreme deity, 288 
Mahakala, the Broad Street in the 

Aryan village, 23, 129 
Mahakali, temple of, at Ujjain, 299 
Maham Anaga, Akbar's nurse, 453, 

454, 459, 460, 461 
Mahanadi, river, 91, 239 
Mahapadma L/ake, Kashmir, 273 
Maharashtra, 212, 300, 310, 339, 387, 

388, 404 
Mahavagga, cited, 54 n. 
Mahdvibhdshd, the, 143 
Mahavira, founder of Jainism, 58-59, 

60, 62, 84, 107, 131 
Mahayana, or the Great Vehicle : 
formation of the school, its doc- 
trine and philosophy, 137-138 ; its 
progress in its first century co- 
incident with the growth of the 
Kushan power, 138, 142 ; had 
a far-reaching effect upon both 
Eastern and Western religion, 139 ; 
Nagarjuna, the great exponent of 
its doctrine, 139, 141, 269 ; spiritu- 
ally and intellectually Indian, and 
only superficially related to Hel- 
lenistic culture, 141 ; a cult for 
the masses, 141 ; not a non- Aryan 
crdt, 141 ; China became the seat 
of the Patriarch of, 144 ; sculp- 
ture of the Mahayana school, 145- 
146 ; Aryan hostility to the move- 
ment, 149 ; helped to reconcile 
Buddhism and Brahmanism, 156 ; 
the members of the cult living 
amicably with followers of the 
Hinayana, 166, 198 ; Magadha the 
spiritual centre of, 169 ; a phase 
of the Vaishnava movement, 184 ; 
Hiuen-Tsang a learned exponent of 
its doctrine, 192 ; Nalanda the 



Oxford of Mahayana Buddhism, 
198 ; favoured by Harsha, 202— 
203 ; sustained in particular the 
fury of the onslaught of Islam in 
India, 210 ; the cleavage between 
the Mahayana and Hinayana 
parties in the Sangha, 214 ; San- 
karacharya's attack upon, 219- 
220 ; in its sectarian aspect, dis- 
appears from the mainland, 220 ; 
its intellectual centre removed to 
Southern China, 408 ; mentioned, 
167, 190, 325 

Mahdawi movement, 338, 446. See 
Mahdi 

Mahdi : Shaikh 'Alai poses as, 446, 
471 ; Akbar imagined to be, 512 ; 
Raushenai poses as, 521-522; Jalala 
poses as, 524 ; mentioned 476, 495 

Mahendra, brother of Asoka, 43 ; 
heads Buddhist missions to South- 
ern India and Ceylon, 95-96 

Mahendragiri, 187 

Mahendrapala, Raja of Kanauj, 264 

Mahipala, King of Gaur, 240 

MahmudShah Bahmani II of Bijapur, 

385 
Mahmud Begarah, Sultan of Gujerat, 

343- 344. 346 

Mahmud III, Sultan of Gujerat, 480 

Mahmud of Ghazni : obtains the 
throne, 281 ; his character, 283- 
284 ; his raids into India, 284- 
289 ; plunders the temple of 
Somnath, 287-289 ; death, 289 ; 
mentioned, 236, 239, 240, 259, 
261, 263, 264, 265, 267, 279, 280, 
290, 293, 307, 317, 327, 343, 367, 
368, 376, 384, 402, 405 

Mahmud Khilji Shah I, Sultan of 
Malwa, 344, 350 

Mahmiid Khilji Shah II of Malwa, 
344, 351-354 

Mahmud Tughlak, Sultan of Delhi, 

367, 370, 373, 374, 378-379 
Mahmud, son of Sikandar I^odi, 424, 

431 
Mahrattas, 390, 392, 528 
Maitreya, the Buddhist Messiah, 193 
Malabar, 219, 344, 345, 361, 365 
Maladhar Vasu : translated the 

Bhagavad Gitd into Bengali, 337 
Mdlatimddhava, drama, 264 
Mdlavikdgnimifra, drama, 121 
Maldeo, Maharaja of Marwar, 434, 

443-444 



565 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Malfuzat-i Ttmun, cited, 369 nn,, 

370 n., 373 nn., 375 n. 
Malik Fakhr-ud-din, quondam Sultan 

of Gaur, 335 
Malik Iftikar, Governor of Khandesh, 

356, 357 
Malik Kabul Ulugh Khan, minister, 

304 
Malik Kafur, general, 306, 307, 308, 

309 
Malik Nasir Khan, Governor of 

Khandesh, 356-358, 432 
Mall Bhatti, Rana, 315-316 
Mallu 'Adil Shah, Stdtan of Bijapur, 

394 

Mallu Khan, general, 374 

Malwa : conquered by Chandragupta 
II, 164 ; conquered by Huns, 175 ; 
subdued by Harsha, 191 ; its 
ancient name Avanti or Ujjain, 
263 ; a centre of Aryan culture, 
263 ; under Musalman rvde, 299 ; 
history, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, 
and sixteenth centuries, 347-355 ; 
annexed to Gujerat, 354, 430 ; con- 
quered by Akbar, 355, 460 ; Hu- 
mayun's armies in, 430 ; annexed 
by Sher Shah, 442 ; mentioned, 189, 
265, 300, 337, 340-341, 343-344. 
356, 358, 379, 424. 425, 454- See 
also XJjjain 

Malwa dynasty, 347 

Mamallapuram, the sculptures at, 

217. 243 
Man Singh, Raja : becomes atta'~hed 
to Akbar' s service, 462 ; fights for 
Akbar in the Gujerat campaign, 
481 ; defeats Partab Singh of 
Mewar, 490-491 ; refuses to become 
a member of the Din-Ilahi, 495- 
496 ; subdues the Afghans, and 
Orissa, 524 ; premier Hindu prince 
in Akbar' s army, 524-525 ; opposed 
to Prince Salim's succession, 534, 
536 ; joint administrator of the 
Umpire during Akbar' s last days, 
536 ; mentioned, 532 
Manaar, Gulf of, 359 
Mandalam, or province, 234 
Mandapam, or temple porch, 117, 
244, 253 ; changed, under Muham- 
madan influence, 342 
Mandu, capital of Malwa, 299, 327, 
347-349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354- 
355, 430, 460 
Mangalavithi, or Path of Blessing 



566 



in the Aryan village, 24, 27 ; sym- 
bolised in Buddhist doctrine, 51 ; 
symbolised in temple-planning, 244 

Manikka-vacagar, Saiva revivalist, 
218 

Mansur, Khalif, 255, 280 

Mansura, city, 285, 289 

Mantra Brahmdna, 231 

Mantram : what it was, and the powers 
attributed to it, 46-47 ; displaced 
by Buddhism, 54-55 ; its efficacy 
lost by incorrect expression, 118 

Mantri, or Foreign Minister, 36 

Manu, the Code of : a Brahman code, 
39 ; describes the sociology and 
polity of Aryavarta under the 
Gupta emperors, 159, 160 ; on 
caste, 159, 162-163 ; on marriage, 
159, 163 ; on food and drinking, 
159-160 ; on hunting and gam- 
bling, 160 ; on kingship, 161 ; on 
the king's council, 161 ; on the 
village system and local administra- 
tion, 162 ; on taxation, 162 ; on 
women, 163 ; on transmigration, 
and humanity's highest aim, 163— 
164 ; embodies early tradition, but 
reflects the conditions of the period 
of its composition, 221 ; quoted, 
18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 37 ; mentioned, 
47, 222 

Mara, god of evil, 365 

Marco Polo : his observations on 
Indian life and custom, 359-365, 
512 

Mariam Zamani, Rajput wife of 
Akbar, 462, 463, 469-470 

Marriage : among the early Dravi- 
dians, 11 ; the development of 
monogamous, 13 ; Manu on, 159, 
163 ; barbarian intermarriage with 
the Indo-Aryan stock, and the 
effect of it, 176-177 ; references to, 
in the Sukrd-niiisdra, 222, 226 ; 
rdkshasa marriage, 261 ; Akbar's 
regulations regarding, 475, 516 ; 
Akbar and plural marriages, 476 

Martaban, or Matama, 240 

Martand, temple of, 272 

Marwar, 434, 443-444 

Masnad Ali Isa Khan, Governor of 
Sambhal, 438 

Matama, or Martaban, 240 

Mathura : a seat of Buddhist learn- 
ing, 126 ; school of Hellenistic 
sculpture at, 135 ; mentioned by 



INDEX 



Fa-Hien, i66 ; Mahmud of Ghazni 
and the temples of, 282 ; sacked 
by Mahmud, 286-287 ; Sikandar 
I(Odi's tyrannous regulations at, 
380 ; mentioned, 37, 97, 327 

Maulana Nasir-ud-din 'Umar, one of 
Timiir's counsellors, 373 

Mauxya, the family name of Chandra- 
gupta, 66 

Maury an art, 1 04-1 18 

Maury an dynasty : Alexander's raid 
associated with the founding of, 
60, 63 ; Chandragupta's reign, 67- 
87 ; Bindusara's reign, 87-88 ; 
the great prestige of, 88 ; Asoka's 
reign, 89-103 ; end of, 119 ; men- 
tioned, 59, 131, 152 

Maury an Empire, the, 66-119; the 
break-up of, traceable to the spread 
of Buddhism, loi ; mentioned, 142 

Mausoleums, of the Muhammadan 
period, 444-445 

Medni Rai, Rajput chieftain, 351- 

354. 424. 425 

Meds, tribe, 251 

Megasthenes, ambassador to Chan- 
dragupta's court, 67, 69, 71, 75, 
67, 78, 82, 84, 87, 115, 129, 221, 
227 

Meghavarna, King of Ceylon, 154 

Mekka : Buddhism probably ex- 
tended to, 210 ; mentioned, 285, 
321, 331, 390, 454, 455, 456, 457, 
470, 492, 496, 508, 515, 518 

Menander, or Mihnda, Indo- Greek 
king : defeated by Pushyamitra, 
120, 123, 124, 125 ; a pious Bud- 
dhist, 125 

Meru, Mount: Vishnu's abode, 7, 
1 1 1 ; the architectural symbol of, 
112 

Mesopotamia : early commercial in- 
tercourse of India with, 4, 337 ; 
the sikhara probably came from, 
112; Buddhism in, 210; the 
intercourse of India with, con- 
tinued through dynastic changes, 
256; mentioned, 88, 119, 290, 337 

Metcalfe, Sir Charles, cited, 31 

Mewar : the Ranas of, claim to be 
descendants of Surya, 182 ; the 
last stronghold of Indo-Aryan 
royalty, 525 ; mentioned, 261, 295, 
343, 469, 490-491, 532, 535 

Mhendri, river, 481 

Midnapiir, 485 



Mihintale, the stiipa at, 96 
Mlhiragula, Hun chieftain, 175-176, 

187, 269 
Mihrdh, adapted by Indian builders, 

336 
Milinda — see Menander 
Milwat, fortress, 382 
Minars : adapted from Indian Towers 

of Victory, 254 
Miriam, wife of Burhan Nizam Shah, 

393. 398 
Mirtha, fortress : captured for Akbar, 

463-464, 467 
Mirza, Sultan, 481, 482 
Mirzas, rise against Akbar, 481-484 
Mitanni, the kingdom, 4, 5 
Mitannians, Aryan race, 4, 41, 119 
Mithila, 191 n. 
Mitra, deity, 7 
Miyan Abdulla, Shaikh Mubarak's 

preceptor, 338 
Mlechchhas, or foreigners, 69, 176, 

177 ; the Sukrd-niiisdra on, 222 
Mogul dynasty, 420 et seq. ; their just 

rule, 426 ; fall of, with Humayiin, 

432-433 ; restored, 448 
Mogul Empire, 378 et seq. ; Akbar's 

influence on the fortunes of, 526- 

527 

' Mogul style ' : essentially an Indo- 
Aryan product, 376 

Moguls : massacred by the Sultan 
'Ala-ud-din, 302, 305, 306 ; in- 
vasions of, repelled by 'Ala-ud- 
dln, 306 ; bought off by Muham- 
mad Tughlak, 311 ; invasion of, 
under Timur, 323, 367-377 ; merce- 
naries of the Afghan Sultanate of 
Delhi, 379 ; the comparative intel- 
lectual poverty of the pure Mogul 
stock, 420 ; defeated at Buxar and 
Kanauj by the Afghans under 
Sher Shah, 432-433 ; mentioned, 
303. 309, 316, 346, 354, 358, 385, 
392, 394. See also Mogul dynasty 
and Mogul Empire 

Mongols — see Moguls 

Monserrate, Father A., Jesuit, 495 n. 

Morgan, M. de, 112 

Mosques : features in the architec- 
ture of, borrowed from the Indian 
temple, 254 ; Indian mosques 
represent an adaptation of Indo- 
Aryan building tradition, 470 ; 
some converted to secular uses by 
Akbar, 517 n. 



567 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Mountain, the holy, as a symbol in 

Aryan art, 109 
Mubarak, Shaikh, Akbar's coun- 
sellor : a man of great learning, 
471, 494 ; interested in the Mah- 
dawi movement, 471 ; signed the 
document recognising Akbar as 
spiritual leader of Islam in India, 
496, 504, 506 ; in danger of being 
executed as a heretic, 498, 507 ; 
leader of the Islamic reform party, 
503 ; mentioned, 338, 518, 534 
Mubarik, Sultan of Delhi, 309 
Miidkal, 386, 392, 393, 397, 401 
Mughalmari, or Takaroi, battle of, 485 
Muhammad, the Prophet, 208-210, 
253, 254. 331-332, 418, 514-515, 517 
Muhammad 'Adil Shah (Muhammad 
Khan), Delhi Sultan, 446, 451, 452, 

459 

Muhammad Atgah Khan, Akbar's 
foster-father : B air am Khan's in- 
signia conferred upon, 455 ; defeats 
Bairam, 456; assassinated, 461, 
484 ; mentioned, 490 

Muhammad Shah Bahmani I, Sultan 
of the Dekhan, 385-387 

Muhammad ibn Bakhtiyar, 267, 293, 
299 

Muhammad Ghuri — see Shihab-ud- 
din 

Muhammad Husain, Mirza, rebel 
leader, 482-483 

Muhammad ibn Kasim, Arab chief- 
tain, 250-251, 252, 257, 266 

Muhammad Quli Khan B arias, 
general, 485 

Muhammad Tughlak, Sultan of Delhi, 
310-314, 315. 316, 317, 320, 333, 

335, 339 

Muhammad Zaman Mirza, rebel 
against Humayun, 429 

Muhammadans : their respect for the 
people of India, 250, 251 ; prin- 
ciples of their rule, 251 ; effect of 
the Muhammadan conquest in 
India, 324-334, 407-409 

Mujahid Shah Bahmani, Sultan of 
the Dekhan, 387 

Mukdiim-ul-Mulk, mulla, 496, 497- 
498, 504, 507, 508 

Mukti, or salvation, 155 

Multan: submits to Mahmiid of 
Ghazni, 285 ; Mahmiid sets out 
from, against Somnath, 288 ; 
Shihab-ud-din at, 293 ; besieged 



568 



and taken for Timiir, 370, 371 ; 
Timiir advances on, 372 ; men- 
tioned, 250, 289, 377, 378 

Mun'im Khan (Khan Khanan), gene- 
ral, 484-486, 529, 530 

Miinja, Raja of Malwa, 264 

Mura, mother of Chandragupta, 66 n. 

Murad, Sultan, son of Akbar : birth, 
470 ; his dissolute character, 476, 
499 ; death, 499, 530, 534 ; besieges 
Ahmadnagar, and fails, 529 

Murtezza Nizam Shah, Sultan of 
Ahmadnagar, 527, 528 

" Music of Ch' in- Wang's Victory," 
201 

Mutarza, Prince, of Ahmadnagar, 
401 

Muzaffar Shah, Sultan of Gujerat, 
340, 341, 347, 348, 351, 353, 354 

Muzaffar Shah III of Gujerat (Nathii 
Shah), 346, 481, 509-510 

Mysore state, 239, 307 

NadoT, battle of, 510 

Nadu, or district, 234 

Nagabhata, Raja of Kanauj, 265-266 

N Uganda, play by Harsha, 192 

Nagarjuna, 139, 141, 269 

Nagarkot, 290 

Nagaur, 455 

Nakula, one of the Pandavas, 40 

Nala, a hero of the Mahabharata, 
408 

Nalanda : renowned for its univer- 
sity, 83, 174 ; Hiuen-Tsang at, 
193, 198-200, 219 ; Hiuen-Tsang's 
description of the monastery, 199- 
200 ; decayed, 408 ; mentioned, 
202, 219 

Nambudri, Brahman sub-caste, 219 

Nanak, guru, 342 

Nanda dynasty, 59, 66, 67 

Nanking, China, 247 

Narain, supreme deity, 327 

Naram-Sin, King of Babylon: the 
stele of, 112, 113, 181, 182 

Narasimhavarman, King of Kanchi, 
212 

Narasinhagupta Baladitya, Gupta 
emperor, 174-175, 177, 184, 187 

Narayana : collective name for sym- 
bols of future life and eternity, 31 ; 
Krishna connected with the con- 
cept of, 415 n. 

Narbada, river, 123, 191, 300, 347, 
350 460, 525 



INDEX 



Nard, a game, 477 

Nasik : architecture of, 107, 146 ; 
mentioned, 130 

Nasir Khan — see Malik Nasir Khan 

Nasir-ud-din, Sidtan of Delhi, 367 

Nasrat Shah, claimant to the throne 
of Delhi, 37S 

Nataraja, Dord of the Dance : Siva 
represented as, 239, 246 ; the 
bronze Nataraja of the Tan j ore 
temple, 329 

Nathu Shah — see Muzaffar Shah III 

Nautch, the, 239 

Navy, Chandragupta's, 87 

Navya Nyaya System, school of 
logic, 410 

Nearchos, Alexander's admiral, 65 

Nepal, 49, 249 

New Testament, 501 

Nigranthas — see Jains 

Nimai, name of Chaitanya, 411. See 
Chaitanya 

Nineveh : the sikhara and stiipa seen 
in sculptures of, 113, 182 

Nirvana : the supreme Aryan truth, 
51 ; in Jainism, 59 ; the Buddha's 
attainment of, 97, 112 ; Asoka 
refers to ' heaven ' as the goal for 
the pious, instead of, 99 ; the 
Buddha's attainment of, symbo- 
lised, 117; in Mahayanist doctrine, 
138 

Niiisdra of Sukracharya — see Sukrd- 
nitisdra 

Nityananda, Chaitanya' s chief dis- 
ciple, 416 

Nivedita, Sister, cited, 158 n., 326, 
413 n. 

Nizam Shahi dynasty of Ahmad- 
nagar, 340, 389, 528 

North-west frontier : Akbar subdues, 
521-524, 527 

Nritya Sabhd, or dancing hall, of the 
Chidambaram temple, 239 

Nudiah : captured by Afghans, 267, 
294 ; the university of, survived 
the Muhammadan conquest, 408 ; 
a flourishing city and famous as an 
educational centre, 410 ; Chai- 
tanya' s birthplace and the scene 
of his early activities, 410-413, 
414, 416, 417 

Nudity: Marco Polo's observations 
on, 359, 364-365 

Nur Jahan, wife of Jahangir, 535 

Nyshapur, 282 



Omar, Khalif, 356 

Ommayad dynasty, 280 

One in Many, the doctrine of : its 
symbolism, and its developments, 
135-136 ; mentioned, 209 

' One without a second,' the theory 
of, 326 

Oral teaching, 168-169, 197. 472 

Orientation of temples, 114, 136 

Orissa, or Kalinga : submits to 
Samudragupta, 153 ; one of the 
' Five Indies,' 191 n. ; remains 
independent of the Mogul Empire, 
485-486 ; brought into subjection 
to Akbar, 524 ; Prince Salim made 
governor of, 532 ; mentioned, 348, 

363 
Oudh, 300. See Agra and Oudh 

Pachisi, a game : played by Akbar, 

477 ^• 

Paez, Francisco, J esuit missionary : his 
description of Vijayanagar, 402-403 

Pahlavis, tribe, 188 

Painting : in the Gupta era, 184 ; 
the influence of the Muhammadan 
conquest upon the traditions of 
Indian painting, 329-330 ; illustra- 
tions for the Hindu epics and other 
literary masterpieces painted at 
Akbar' s command, 499 

Pala dynasty, 266, 267 

' Palace of the Gods,' at Bharhut, 116, 
117 

Pali : superseded Sanskrit as the 
official literary language, 154 ; 
mentioned, 141 

Falitana, sacred hill of, 343 

Pallava dynasty, 217, 236, 237, 238, 
242 

Panch Mahall, at Fatehpur-Sikri, 
513 n., 536 

Panch-janah, or ' Five Peoples,' 34 

Panchala, the state, 263, 266. See 
Kanauj 

Panchalas, Aryan tribe, 37 

Panchavdra, or Committee of General 
Affairs, in the village assembly, 
231, 233 

Panchayats, or councils of five, 
Chandragupta's, 87 

Pandavas : taught the use of weapons 
by Drona, 39 ; the struggle between 
the Kauravas and, 40, 263, 292 ; 
reputed to be descendants of 
Chandra, 41 



569 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Pandit, minister in the Aryan Council, 

36. 225 
Pandits, or scholars : contests of the, 

412-413 
Pandu, King, 40 
Pandya dynasty, 43, 129, 140, 236, 

237. 238, 307 
Pandya kingdom, 43, 95, 212, 245 
' Pandyas, the five,' 43 
Panipat, battle of, between Babur 
and the Afghans, 382-383, 384, 
420, 422, 425, 430 ; between Akbar 
and Hemu, 452, 459 
Panjab, the : Aryan immigration 
into, 5 ; one of the three areas to 
which the Aryan race was mainly 
confined, 32 ; Alexander the Great's 
raid into, 60 ; probably not in- 
cluded in Pushyamitra's empire, 
123 ; invaded by Turki nomads, 
125 ; under the Kushan power, 
139 ; under suzerainty of the 
Hxins, 175 ; one of the ' Five 
Indies,' 191 n. ; under suzerainty 
of Mahmiid of Ghazni, 289, 291 ; 
invaded by Moguls, 311; recovered 
by the Afghans, 379 ; conquered 
by Babur, 381-382 ; ceded to Sher 
Shah, 433 ; recovered by Huma- 
yun, 448 ; won for Akbar by 
Bairam Khan, 450-452 ; Bairam 
foments a revolt in, 455-456 ; 
Mirza Hakim invades, 466, 509 ; 
the Mirzas' attempt on, 482, 484 ; 
mentioned, 33, 164, 191, 265, 290, 
293, 321, 442, 459 
Paramara dynasty of Malwa, 264 
Paramdsdyika, mystic figure, 25 
Parantaka I, Chola king, 230, 238, 

239: 243 
Parantaka II, Chola king, 239 
Parasuramesvar, temple of, 211 
Pari-Nirvdna, or death : of the 
Buddha, 57, 89, 97, 117; the 
stupa a symbol of, iii, 117 
Parishat, agency of government, 93 
Partab Singh, Rana of Mewar, 490-49 1 
Parvati, or Uma, the Spring-maiden, 

29, 184 
Pataliputra : description of, as Chan- 
dragupta Maurya's capital, 75-77, 
78-79 ; government of, 77-78 ; built 
mainly of wood, 78, 115 ; founded 
by Ajatasatru, 89 ; Asoka's Council 
of the Sangha at, 96 ; Samudra- 
gupta changes his capital from, to 

570 



Ajodhya, 153 ; Fa-Hien on, 167- 
168, 169 ; Hiuen-Tsang on, 196 ; 
mentioned, 66, 67, 71, 92, 95. 97' 
119, 124, 130, 131, 137, 149. 177. 
229, 237, 266 

Patau, 481, 482, 483, 509 

Patanjali, Sanskrit grammarian, 122 ; 
systematised the doctrine of Yoga, 
134, 138 

' Pathan ' style, Fergusson's, 283, 
294-295, 348 ; ' Pathan ' art is 
purely Indian, 295-296, 343, 376 _ 

Pathan Sultans, 290-300 ; their 
quahty as rulers, 297-298 

Paths, the Three, of Indo-Aryan 
religion, 136 

Patna, 484 

Pattadakal, temple at, 218, 219, 242 

Pearl-fishery: described by Marco 
Polo, 359, 360 

Pegu, or Prome, ancient kingdom of 
Burma, 240 

PersepoUs, 75, 106 

Persia : the Aryan intellectual, 
spiritual, and political elements 
in, 61-62 ; Alexander the Great's 
conquest of, naturally led him to 
India, 63 ; Indian artistic tradition 
related to Persian, but not im- 
ported from Persia, 105 ; Bud- 
dhism in, 210; and Islam, 280; 
" a province of Aryan India," 328 ; 
Persian architecture founded on 
Indian building tradition, 328 ; 
embassy from, to Gujerat, 344 ; 
horses imported from, into India, 
361 ; Humayiin a refugee in, 433- 
436, 445, 447 ; Akbar recovers 
Kandahar from, 527 ; mentioned, 
139, 290, 514 

Persian : the court language of 
Musalman India, 333, 4S8, 489 ; 
forbidden as the official language 
by Ibrahim Shah of Bijapiir, 394; 
taught in some of tbe village 
schools, 409 ; the revenue accounts 
ordered to be kept in, under Akbar, 
488-4S9 ; Persian translations of 
the Gospels and of Hindu classics 
ordered to be made by Akbar, 499 

Peshawar, 139, 293, 448 

Phihppos, one of Alexander's gover- 
nors, 66 

Philosophy, Indian : the distinctive 
character of, 3-4 ; coloured by the 
Himalayan environment, 7; grew 



INDEX 



spontaneously on Indian soil, 45 ; 
its practical value, 56, 128; the 
basic schools of Indian thought, 
and their representation in ar- 
tistic symbolism, 107-118; the 
great influence exercised by philo- 
sophers in the Indian state, 207- 
208 ; the philosophical discussions 
of Akbar's court, 473, 474-475, 
492 ; Akbar's study of Hindu 
philosophy, 500 

Pinda offerings, 414 

Pir Muhammad, grandson of Timur, 

370. 371-372, 377 

Pir Muhammad, tutor to Akbar, 453- 
.454, 455-456, 460 

Piracy in the Indian seas, 362-364 

' Place of Alms, the,' Harsha's 
festival at, 204-206 

Plague : of 1033, 290 ; in the early 
years of Akbar's reign, 451 

Pliny, cited, 140 

Poll-tax — see Jizya 

Poros, or Purusha, King : opposes 
Alexander's invasion and is de- 
feated, 64 ; put to death, 66 

Portuguese : arrive in India and 
settle at Goa, 344-346, 389 ; their 
influence on Aryan India, 365 ; 
set up an Inquisition at Goa, 380; 
aid Prince AbduUa of Bijapur, 396- 
397 ; send missions to Akbar's 
court, 498-499 

Post, letter, established by Babur, 
426 ; a postal service organised by 
Sher Shah, 441 

Prabhakara-Vardhana, Raja of Tha- 
neshar, 188 

Pradakshind, the rite of, 24, 27, 109 

Pradhdna, or President of the Coun- 
cil, 36, 82, 225 

Prddvivdka, or Chief Justice, 36 

Prahlada, 408 

Prambanam, 145 

Prasad, Rana, of Amarkot, 434, 435 

Pratinidhi, viceroy, or legal m.ember 
of the Council, 36, 225 

Prithivi-raja, Raja of Delhi : defeats 
Shihab-ud-din, 291 ; defeated by 
Shihab-ud-din, and put to death, 
292-293 ; mentioned, 306, 408 

Priyadarsikd, play by Harsha, 192 

Prome — see Pegu 

Property : development of the idea 
of individual ownership in, among 
the early Dravidians, 13 



Provinces: method of organisation 

and administration of, in the Chola 

kingdom, 234 
Ptolemy Philadelphus : sends an 

embassy to Bindusara's court, 87 ; 

mentioned, 95, 98 
Pulakesin I, Chalukyan king, 188, 

218 
Pulakesin II, 191, 211, 212 
Puragupta, Gupta emperor, 1 74 
Piiran Mall, Raja of Raisin, 442- 

443 

Puranas, sacred poems : some prob- 
ably belong to the Gupta period, 
158 ; familiar to the masses, 338 

Purbiya dynasty of Bengal, 335, 336 

Puri: Chaitanya at, 417, 419 

Purnavarma, Raja of Pataliputra, 
196 

Purohita, or Royal Chaplain, 36, 39, 
87, 225 

Purusha, King — see Poros 

Purusha, philosophical concept, 136 

Purushapura, 139, 143. See Pesha- 
war 

Pushyagupta, governor : formed the 
Lake Beautiful at Girnar, 73 

Pushyamitra : made Emperor of Ma- 
gadha, 1 19-120 ; his famous horse- 
sacrifice, 120-121, 122, 124 ; said 
to have persecuted the Buddhists, 
121, 123 ; extent of his empire, 
123 ; mentioned, 124, 125, 131 

Pushyamitra, hostile confederation, 
172 

Pythagoras of Samos, 60 



Quran, the : contains no evidence of 
having been inspired by the psy- 
chology of Buddhism, 209 ; the 
law of, supplants Aryan law and 
custom in the courts, 251 ; the 
philosophy of, enriched by Indian 
and Persian scholarship, 280 ; men- 
tioned, 157, 255, 296, 299, 321, 
331, 368, 374, 388, 446, 461, 
475, 493, 496, 497, 498, 501, 504. 
505 

Qutb Minar, the, at Delhi, 294 

Qutb Shahi dynasty, 393 

Qutb-ud-din : mosque of, at Delhi, 
164, 298 ; sacked the monasteries 
of Bihar, 267, 293-294; Sultan at 
Delhi, 294, 299 ; mentioned, 306 

Qutb-ud-din, Shaikh, 501 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Radhakumud Mookerji, cited, 2:^6n. 
Rai Lakhsmaniya, Raja of Gaur, 410 
Rai Singh, Raja of Bikanir, 482, 483 
Raichor, 392, 393, 397, 401 
Raisin: massacre of Rajputs at, 442- 

443. 444 

Raiyatwdri revenue system, 10 

Raj, the British, 70, 257, 263 

Rajadhiraja, Chola king, 241 

Rajaditya, Chola king, 239 

Rajagriha, capital of Magadha, 37; 
General Assembly of the Sangha 
at, 53 

Rdjapatha, or King's Road, 23, 62, 
71, 114, 180, 244 

Rajaraja (Rajarajadeva) I, Chola king, 
229, 234 n., 239-240, 243, 246 

Rajasekhara, dramatist, 264 

Rajasri, Princess, 189, 190, 191, 202, 
205, 206 

Rdjasiiya, coronation rite, 195 

Rdjatarangini, cited, 269 w., 270 andn., 
271, 272, 273-274, 275 

Rajendra I, Chola king, 240, 241, 243 

Rajendra III, 241 

Rajputana : one of the three areas 
to which the Aryan race was mainly 
confined, 32 ; invaded by Turki 
nomads, 125 ; maintained Aryan 
tradition in the period of the 
Muhammadan invasions, 260-262 ; 
land-holding in, 261-262 ; rule in, 
262-263 ; struggle with the Arabs, 
263, 266 ; literature and art in, 
264 ; temple-building in, 264-265 ; 
great irrigation works in, 265 ; 
history of, in the pre-Muhammadan 
period, 265-266 ; Akbar's cam- 
paign in, 463-464, 466-469 ; Akbar 
sends an expedition to, against the 
Rajputs of Mewar, 490-491 ; men- 
tioned, 38, 44, 121, 124, 182, 191, 
306, 455, 457, 459 

Rajputs : a representative Indo- 
Aryan type, 32 ; racial prejudice 
of, and its results, 177 ; their claim 
to Aryan ancestry, 260-261 ; their 
culture, religious sense, and loyalty, 
263 ; helped to build up the Mogul 
Empire, 294 ; for a time, in power 
in Malwa, 351-354 ; of Gwalior, 
make peace with Babur, 383-384 ; 
massacred by Slier Shah at Raisin, 
442-443 ; Akbar wins their loyalty 
462 ; help Akbar in the conquest of 
Gujerat, 481-482; mentioned, 392 

572 



Rajya-pala, Raja of Kanauj, 287 
Rajya-Vardhana of Thaneshar, 188- 

189, 196 
Rdkshasas, or demons, 13 ; the 
rdkshasa form of marriage, 261 

Ram Deva, Raja of Deoghur, 300- 
301, 306 

Rama : the story of, in the Rdmd- 
yana, 42 ; mentioned, 41, 127, 
151, 152, 153, 155, 158, 173, 292, 
408 

Ramanand, Hindu teacher, 380 

Ramaniija, Vaishnava reformer, 217, 
325-326, 338, 409 

Rdmdyana : on the status of crafts- 
men, 19 ; on the royal coimcil, 
36 ; the distinction between the 
Mahdbhdrata and, 41-42 ; probably 
older than the Mahdbhdrata as an 
epic, 42 ; the first literary record 
of the passing of the Aryans into 
Southern India, 42 ; belongs to 
Kshatriya literature, 42 ; hardly 
any trace can be found of the 
cities mentioned in, 43 ; in its 
present form, probably belongs to 
the Gupta period, 158 ; familiar to 
the masses, 338 ; translated into 
Persian, 499 ; mentioned, 5, 34, 
37, 105, 121, 127, 376 

Ramesvaram, temple of, 211, 244 

Ramraj, Raja of Vijayanagar: wins 
his throne, 395 ; allied with Ahmad- 
nagar, 396, 397 ; allied with Bija- 
piir, 398, 399-400 ; defeated at 
Talikota and put to death, 401- 
402 ; mentioned, 394, 405, 528 

Ranpur, Jaina temple at, 341-342 

Rantambhor : besieged by the Sultan 
'Ala-ud-din, 306 ; taken by Akbar, 
469 

Rashtrakiita dynasty, 219, 238, 245, 
253. 257. 266, 325, 388 

Ratan Singh, Raja of Chitor, 344, 

354 
Ratha, or war-chariot, symboHsm of, 

181 
Raths, at Mamallapuram, 243 
Ratnavah, wife of Raja Pur an Mall, 

442 
Ratnavah, play by Harsha, 192 
Raushenai, posed as the Mahdi, 521- 

522 
Raushenais, tribe, 521-522, 524 
Ravana, demon king of Ceylon, 42, 

173. 236 



INDEX 



Ravi, river, 64, 371 

Razia Begam, Sultana of Delhi, 299 

Red Sea ports. South Indian trade 

with, 236 
Reincarnation, the dogma of, 134- 

135 

Relic- worship, 150 

Religion, Indian : its distinctive 
character, 3-4 ; its relation to the 
ordinary daily life of the Aryan 
household, 26-27 ; the Saiva and 
Vaishnava schools and the funda- 
mental concepts of Hindu religion, 
29-32 ; popular notions of religion 
widely severed from the specula- 
tions of the philosophical schools, 
31-32 ; Aryan religion already a 
synthesis of ideas before the advent 
of the Buddha, 45 ; the true aim 
of Indo- Aryan religion, 56 ; Asoka's 
liberal principle, 94 ; Aryan re- 
ligious symbolism rejected the 
graven image and materialistic 
vehicles of thought, 11 7-1 18 ; the 
popular divinities continued to 
exist side by side with the Bud- 
dhistic faith, 118 ; new ideas con- 
tributed to the Indian religious 
synthesis as a consequence of the 
Turki invasions, 126; influence of , 
upon the practical concerns of 
life, 128 ; Aryan religion absorbed 
and preserved by the South, 
128-129, 227; the anthropomor- 
phic element in Indo- Aryan religion 
132; the doctrine of Yoga, 134; 
the dogma of reincarnation, 134- 
135 ; the doctrine of the One in 
Many, 135-136 ; Brahmanism re- 
sumes its natural position as 
India's religion, 148 ; Vaishnava 
propaganda in the Gupta period, 
178 ; Fergusson on the religion of 
the pure Aryans, 178-179 ; the 
sikhara and its connection with 
Indian religion, 179-180 ; the 
mutual tolerance of the Buddhist, 
Brahman, and Jain sects, 185 ; 
the origin and development of 
Vaishnavism andSaivism, 213-218 ; 
religion and pohtics inseparable in 
Indian history, 215-216, 227, 511; 
the primitive doctrine of Islam 
expanded by the working upon 
it of Indian religious thought, 
307-308 ; the cult of Satya-Pir, 



338 ; Marco Polo's observations 
on Indian religious practices, 364- 
365 ; tendency to an understand- 
ing between Muhammadan and 
Hindu in the fifteenth century, 
379-380 ; Hindus persecuted for 
their faith by Sikandar I^odi, 380 ; 
the conflict between Bijapur and 
Vijayanagar had not a religious 
basis, 403-404 ; Akbar's attempt 
to reconcile religious differences, 
459, 463 ; Akbar and the Din-Ilahi, 
339, 418, 480, 511-519 ; Akbar's 
steadfast adherence to Islam, 492- 
493 > 494-495 ; his religious philo- 
sophy, 493-494, 495, 501-502 ; his 
religious discussions, 496-498, 503, 
511 ; his attitude towards Chris- 
tianity, 473-474, 495, 498-499; as- 
serts himself as spiritual leader of 
Islam in India, 503-506, 511 ; his 
effort to make the highest religious 
principles the motive power of 
State policy, 537 
Renunciation, the Buddha's, 97, loi, 

117, 206 
Republics, Indian, 38, 68, 69 
Rig- Veda, the, 33 
Rivers : their importance as highways 

in ancient India, 72-73 
Roads : early, 23, 129-130 ; regula- 
tion of, in ancient India, 71-72 ; 
Hiuen-Tsang found good roads in 
India, 193 ; the Sukrd-nitisdra 
on, 222 ; the great trunk road to 
the north-west frontier, restored 
by Babur, 426 ; Sher Shah's care 
for, 441 
Rodolfo Aquaviva — see Aquaviva 
Rohtas, fortress in Bihar, 432, 442 ; 

in the Panjab, 442 
Rome, I. The state : Indian inter- 
course with, 139-141, 143. II. The 
city : Indian products in, 129, 140 
Rudra Deva, Raja of Warangal, 363 
Rudra-Sena, King of Kathiawar, 164 
Rudramana Devi, Queen of Telingana, 

363 
Rukn-ud-din, Sultan of Delhi, 299 
Rumi Khan, Turkish officer, 431 
Riipmati, and Baz Bahadur, 355, 460 
Ryots : enjoyed prosperity under 
Firuz Shah, 319 ; Sher Shah's 
treatment of, 437-438, 439-440, 
441 ; protected by Akbar, 479, 
487-488, 489-490, 515 

573 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Sabat, besieging device, 467-468 

Sabha, the Aryan patriarchal assem- 
bly, 14, 228, 229. See Assemblies 

Sabuktagin, Sultan of Ghazni, 239, 
280, 281, 284, 285 

Sachau, C. B., cited, 210 n., 243 n., 
255 n., 256 n. 

Sachiva, or War Minister, 36 

Sacred Books of the East, 54 n., 57 n. 

Sacrifice : development of, 47-48 ; 
human, 48 ; displaced by Bud- 
dhism, 54-55 ; the directing and 
compelling force of the universe, 
according to Vedic philosophy, 
58 ; forbidden by Asoka, 92 

Sddhus, seekers after truth and 
knowledge : praised by Hiuen- 
Tsang, 197-198 

Safdar Khan, rebel, 391-392 

Saffarid dynasty, 280 

Sahadeva, one of the Pandavas, 40 

SahasI, Raja of Sind, 211 

Sahib Khan, brother of Mahmud II 
of Malwa, 351-352 

Sahiba, the first three Khalifs, 399 

Sahseram: Sher Shah's mausoleum 
at, 444, 449; mentioned, 437 

Saiva sect : one of the two main 
groups of modern Hinduism, 29, 
42 ; the philosophy of, belongs to 
the beginnings of Aryan religion, 
29-30 ; the character of Saiva philo- 
sophy, 31 ; the lines of cleavage 
between the Vaishnava school and, 
evidenced by the stiipa and the 
sikhara, 113 ; the stupa a Saiva 
symbol, 180 ; the Saiva sculptures 
of Elephanta, 184 ; Hiuen-Tsang 
on customs of Saiva ascetics, 195 ; 
the rise and development of Saiv- 
ism, 213-220 ; the architecture 
of the Saiva revival, 213, 216-217, 
218-219,238,242-244; thenautch 
associated with Saivism, 239 ; the 
bronze sculpture of the Saiva 
revival, 245-246 

Saka dynasty, 164 

Sakala (vSialkot), 175 

Sakas, Turki nomads : invade India, 
125, 138, 176, 188 

Saktas, Hindu sect : suppressed by 
Firuz Shah, 317 

Sakimtala, drama, 158, 376 

Sakya Muni, name of the Buddha, 
109, 214 

Sakyas, Indo-Aryan clan, 49 

574 



vSalim Shah, or Islam Shah, Sultan of 
Delhi, 445-446, 471 

Salim, Sultan, son of Akbar : his 
mother Mariam Zamani, 463 ; 
birth, 470 ; named after the Shaikh 
Salim Chishti, 470, 492 ; married 
to a daughter of Raja Bhagwan 
Das, 520 ; his vices, and his father's 
grief for them, 531, 535; disliked 
Abul Fazl, 531; rises against his 
father, 532 ; causes Abul Fazl to be 
assassinated, 533 ; Akbar's leniency 
to, 533-535; succeeds as Jahangir, 
536. See Jahangir 

Salim Chishti, Shaikh : consulted by 
Akbar, 470 ; the J ami' Masjid at 
Fatehpur-Sikri built in honour of, 
470, 492 ; mentioned, 473, 535 n. 

Salima, Sultana, wife of Akbar, 535 

Salivahan, Rajput chieftain, 353 

Saman, founder of the Samanid 
dynasty, 280 

Samana, 372 

Samanid dynasty, 280 

Samanya, or Siitas, the fifth class in 
the Aryan social system, 22 

Samarkand, 283, 285, 368, 370, 375, 
376, 377 

Samarsi, Raja of Chitor, 291 

Sambandha, inspired child, 246 

Sambhal, 426, 438-439 

Samman Burj, ' Jessamine Bower,' in 
the palace at Agra, 477 n. 

Sammitiya school of the Hinayana, 
190 

Samos, 140 

Samudragupta, Gupta emperor : his 
culture, 152, 158 ; succeeds to the 
throne, 152 ; asserts his supremacy 
in Aryavarta, and conquers the 
South, 152-154 ; his cordial rela- 
tions with Ceylon, 153-154 ; asso- 
ciated with the Gupta renaissance 
in Sanskrit literature, 158 ; men- 
tioned, 164, 171, 172, 191 

Sdn-kirtana -pattie^s, Chaitanya's, 415- 
416 

Sanchi : the sculptures of, 96, 107, 
no, 116, 132, 418; mentioned, 
104 

Sandhimati, minister, 270 

Sandhyd, priestly ritual, 27, 136 

Sanga, Rana of Chitor, 353, 354, 424, 
425, 431, 467 

Sangam, body of literary critics, of 
Madura, 237 



INDEX 



Sangha, the Buddhist : constitution 
and rules of, 51-53 ; the Vindya 
Pitaka, a body of rules of, 54, 
57 ; little known of the progress 
of the Order diiring the Buddha's 
lifetime and the first two centuries 
after, 57, 89; did not include the 
laity, 59 ; growth into power, 89- 
90 ; Asoka becomes a member of, 
92 ; in the Trinity of Buddhism, 
109, 137 ; the learned members of, 
claimed greater authority than the 
Brahmans, 113 ; disestablished, 
121 ; persecuted by Pushyamitra, 
121, 123 ; represented many dif- 
ferent schools of thought, 132 ; 
Asoka' s General AssembUes of, 

137 ; the great schism in, 137- 

138 ; General Assembly of, con- 
vened by Kanishka, 143 ; main* 
tained its influence during the 
Kushan period, 146 ; the machi- 
nery of, controlled by the Brah- 
mans, 148 ; Aryan revolt against 
the tyranny of, 149-150, 152 ; the 
Guptas did not move against, 156 ; 
the intellectual downfall of, 156- 
157 ; Fa-Hien on the flourishing 
condition of, 166; Skandagupta a 
liberal patron of, 172 ; Hiuen-'Tsang 
on, 196-197 ; Harsha's discipline 
of, 202 ; Harsha's General Assembly 
of, 207 ; the formation of the 
Vaishnava party in, 214 ; the 
authority of, in the State, 216 ; 
the organisation of, destroyed, 220 ; 
the Brahmans of the South opposed 
corruption in, 227 ; the third 
General Assembly of, said to have 
been held in Kashmir, 269 ; the 
Four Paths of, 512 ; mentioned, 
248. See also Buddha und Bud- 
dhism 

Sangha, the Jain, 58-59 

Sanghamitra, sister of Asoka : Bud- 
dhist missionary to Ceylon, 96 

Sangharamas, Buddhist monasteries, 
166 

Sankaracharya : the great exponent 
of Saivism, 215, 216, 217 ; his 
career, 219-220 ; overthrew Bud- 
dhism, 220, 325-326 ; his Niti- 
sdra, 221-226 ; mentioned, 338, 409 

Sankhya school of philosophy, 46 

Sanskrit : the medium for transmit- 
. ting the teaching of the Vedas and 



Aryan tradition, 118, 154; the 
Gupta revival in Sanskrit learning, 
154-155, 177 ; employed for the 
documents of Buddhism, according 
to Fa-Hien, 169 ; a treatise on 
Sanskrit grammar written by 
Harsha, 192 ; the knowledge of, 
became widely diffused among the 
Hindus, 338 

Saracens : many elements in the 
culture of, borrowed from India, 
254 ; so-called Saracenic architec- 
ture in India really Indian, 296, 
328-329 

Sarang Khan, Governor of Multan, 

370. 378 
Sarangpur, 349, 355, 460 
Sarasvati, goddess of learning, 46, 

264, 410 
Sarkar — see Benoy and Jadunath 
Sarkij, 510 
Sarnath : Asoka makes a pilgrimage 

to, 97; mentioned, 46, 114, 179, 

180, 182, 214 
Sarsa, 481 
Sasanka, King, 196 
Sat-Chit-Anandam, Trinity of Spirit, 

136 
Sati : forbidden by Akbar, 475, 516 ; 

mentioned, 190, 360, 469 
Satiyaputra dynasty, 129 
Satij^aputra kingdom, 95 
Sattvam - Rajas - Tamas, Trinity of 

Matter, 136 
Satuni, King of Lulabu, 112 
Saty a-Naray ana, synonym for Vishnu, 

338 
Satya-Pir, the cult of, 338 
Satyavana, husband of Savitri, 408 
Savitri, goddess of wisdom, 120, 408 
Sayurgdls, Crown lands given as 

benevolences, 506, 507-508 
Sayyid dynasty of Delhi, 379 
Sayyid Muhammad, Sultan of Delhi, 

379 
Sayyids, descendants of the Prophet, 

371. 375. 379, 497 
Schools, village, 409 

Sculpture : of the Mauryan period, 
105-118 ; Hellenistic traditions on 
Indian soil, 133, 135 ; Indian in- 
fluence on the artistic thought 
of Hellenism, 141 ; the freedom 
of the sculpture of the Maha- 
yana school communicated to the 
Hinayana, 146 ; the sculptures of 

575 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Blephanta, 184-185 ; the sculp- 
tures of Mamallapuram, 217 ; of 
the Chola period, 245-246 ; the 
influence of the Muhammadan 
conquest upon the traditions of 
Indian sculpture, 329-330 ; sculp- 
tured ornament abandoned by the 
Hindu temple-builders, 342-343 

Seistan: Humayxin in, 436 

Seleukos, Alexander's general : in- 
vades India, 67 ; mentioned, 87 

Sen — see Dinesh Chandra Sen 

Sena dynasty, 267, 410 

Senapati, the War-god — see Kartti- 
keya 

Sennacherib, palace of, represented in 
a Nineveh sculpture, 113, 182 

Sesha, or Ananta, the serpent of 
Bternity : guarded Vishnu-Nara- 
yana, 28 

Sessodia clan, 292 

Shachi Devi, mother of Chaitanya, 
411, 414, 417 

Shah Jahan, Mogul emperor, 522, 

527. 534 
Shahab-ud-din, Sultan of Damascus, 

347 

Shahab-ud-din, general, 370 

Shahab-ud-din Abul Abbas Ahmad : 
his Travels cited, 308 n. 

Shahiya Turks, 271 

Shah-ndma of Firdausi, 283 

' Shaikhu Baba,' Prince Salim's nick- 
name, 535 

Shams-i-Siraj 'AJif, chronicler, 315, 

319 
Shams-ud-din Ilyas, Sultan of Gaur, 

335 

Sharaf Kai, minister, 302 

Sharif-ud-din Husain, Mirza, 463- 
464, 465 

Shark! dynasty, 320, 337, 379 

Sharwan, 375 

Sher Khan Sur — see Sher Shah 

Sher Shah Sur (Sher Khan), Sultan of 
Delhi, 355 ; attacks Humayiin and 
drives him from his throne, 430- 
433 ; becomes Shah, 433 ; his 
reign, 437-444 ; his able adminis- 
tration, 437-442 ; death, 444 ; 
his mausoleum at Sahseram, 444, 
449; his work destroyed by 'Adil 
Shah, 446 ; contrasted with Huma- 
yun, 448-449; mentioned, 336,445, 
452, 453, 508 

Sher Shah II, 459 



Shiah sect : suppressed by Firuz 
Shah, 317 ; the origin, the tenets, 
and the following of, 331-334 ; 
the qviarrels between Shiah and 
Sunni had little influence on 
foreign politics, 388-389 ; the 
fallacy of the ' Shiah revolt' in the 
Dekhan, 333, 403 n.; followed by 
the majority of Persian Musalmans, 
422 ; Sher Shah moves against, 
443 ; Humayiin compelled to be- 
come a proselyte of, 447 ; men- 
tioned, 389, 392, 399 

Shihab-ud-din, or Muhammad Ghiiri, 
Sultan of Delhi, 291, 293-294, 384 

Shiraz, 375 

Shirl, MuUa, 491 

Shivi, King, 408 

Sholapur, 395, 396, 398, 401, 528 

Shiira, minister, 272-273 

Sialkot, 175 

Siam : Indian intercourse with, 145 

Siddhan, or Siddhi-astu, Hindu 
primer, 197 

Siddhartha, Prince — see Buddha 

Sikandar Lodi, Sultan of Delhi : 
supports a Muhammadan revolt in 
Malwa, 351-352 ; a capable and 
just ruler, 379, 381 ; persecuted 
the Hindus, 379-381, 410 ; death, 
381 ; mentioned, 344, 424, 431 

Sikandar Siir, Afghan chieftain, 425 

Sikandra : Sikandar Lodi buried 
at, 381 ; Akbar's mausoleum at, 
536 

Sikhara, temple spire : the symbol- 
ism of, 112, 113 ; the antiquity of, 
as an architectural motif, 112 ; the 
origin of, 113, 178-183 ; Fergusson 
on the non-Ar3'an origin of, 178- 
179 ; typical of the Vaishnava 
school of thought, 214, 326 ; pecu- 
liar to Northern India, 216-217 '> 
in Jain temples, 245 ; combined 
with the stiipa, 245 ; mentioned, 
211 

Sikri, village : Fatehpur built by 
Akbar on the site of, 470 

Silabhadra, Abbot of Nalanda, 198, 
199, 200 

Silpa-Sdstras, body of canons of craft 
ritual : on the planning of the Indo- 
Ar5'an village, 22-23, 26 and n., 
105, 128, 130, 136, 180 ; said to 
have been written bj' Agastya, 127 ; 
mentioned, 19, 23, 225, 226, 237 



576 



INDEX 



Sind : the Arabs in, i88, 250, 251, 
257, 259 ; the far-reaching effect 
of the Arab conquest of, on the 
culture of Islam, 252-253 ; invaded 
by Mahmud of Ghazni, 285, 288, 
289 ; part of, absorbed in the 
Delhi Empire, 291 ; conquered by 
Akbar, 524 ; mentioned, 124, 255, 
256, 434, 435 

Sindhu, river, 121, 274 

Sipah Salar Rajab, father of Firuz 
Shah, 315, 316 

Sirkind, 451 

Sita, wife of Rama, 42, 151, 153, 236 

Siva : the Great Ascetic, 15 ; Kar- 
ttikeya the offspring of, 27 n. ; 
given the attributes of Yama, 27 ; 
Spirit of Death, 28 ; symbolism of, 
28-29 ; a name standing for the 
death symbols in Indo-Aryan reli- 
gion, 31 ; one of the Three Aspects 
of the One Eternal, 31, 109, 136, 
185, 205 ; as philosophical concept, 
31 ; the popiilar conception of, 32 ; 
in the Mahdbhdrata, 42 ; Mount 
Kailasahis hermitage, iii ; repre- 
sented as Nataraja, Lord of the 
Dance, 239, 246 ; his bow becomes, 
as the crescent, the ensign of 
Islam, 254 ; the Moon-Lord, 287, 
288 ; the lingam, symbol of, 289 ; 
mentioned, 7, 29, 34, 41, 146, 178, 
183, 184, 214, 219, 246 

Siwana, fortress, 444 

Siwand Rai, Rajput chieftain, 293 

Skandagupta, Gupta emperor, 172- 

174 

Slavery : organised by Firuz Shah, 
321-322 ; Akbar forbade the mak- 
ing of slaves of prisoners of war, 
469 

Smith, Vincent A,, cited, 43 n.,66 n., 
87, 91 n., 118 n., 121, 144, 174 nn., 
189 n., 190, 248, 264, 494 n- 
495 n., 518, 536 n. 

Smriti, reasoned knowledge, 31 

Society : organisation of Indo-Aryan, 
5-11, 14-27 ; organisation of Dra- 
vidian, 11-14 

Sogdiana, 139 

Soma : the Moon-god, 33 ; the cult 
of, 41, 121, 192 ; the temple of, 
at Somnath, 287 

Soma juice, 48, 100, 121; not men- 
tioned in the Code of Manu, 160 

Somesvara I, Chalukyan king, 241 



Somnath, temple of : plundered by 
MahmM of Ghazni, 283, 287 ; 
mentioned, 299 

Son, river, 75 

Spies, in Chandragupta's government, 

83 

Sravasti : Asoka makes a pilgrimage 
to, 97 ; a small place in Fa-Hien's 
time, 166; mentioned, 194 

Sri Kakulam, seaport, 130 

Srimal, or Bhinmal, 266 

Srinagar, 143, 268, 522 

Sringeri Math, monastery, 220 

Srirangam, temple at, 326 

Srong-Tsan-Gampo, King of Tibet, 
249 

SruH, divine revelation, 31 

Stapathi, or master-builder, 128 

Stein, Sir M. A. : his translation of 
Rdjatarangini cited, 269 n., 270 
and n., 271, 272, 273-274, 275 

Sthanesvara — see Thaneshar 

Sthdnlka, or mayor, 85 

Sthdniya, a fortress, 71 

Strabo, cited, 140 

Stupa, monument : became the most 
sacred symbol of Buddhism, 77 ; 
Asoka built stiipas lavishly, 102 ; 
the stupas of Bharhut and Sanchi, 
107 ; symbolism of, 109-115, 179- 
180, 217 ; not derived from the 
sikhara, 179-180 ; typical of the 
Saiva school of thought, 214 ; com- 
mon in the South, 217 ; in Jain 
temples, 245 ; combined with the 
sikhara, 245 ; the mausoleum of 
the Muhammadan period the coun- 
terpart of, 444-445 

Succession to the throne, the Aryan 
law of, 90, 189, 248 

Sudarsana, or Lake Beautiful, at 
Gimar, 73 

Sudras : one of the four ' pure classes,' 
16 ; Brahmans reduced to the 
status of, for neglect of the rules 
of their order, 19 ; penalty upon, 
for theft, 21 ; status and duties of, 
22, 76 ; work of Stidra craftsmen, 
107 ; rules governing, laid down 
in the Code of Manu, 159, 163 ; 
Manu on Siidra kingship, 161 ; 
foreigners recognised as, 176 ; a 
Sudra became a Kshatriya on being 
made king, 191 ; a Sudra might 
become king, 195 ; the Sukrd-niti- 
sdra on, 222 ; position of, in the 

o 577 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Rajput states, 261-262; gain en- 
trance to the Sanskrit Tols, 338 

Sufism, 280, 332, 447, 496 

Sukrd-nitisdra : on the conduct of a 
king, 36, 83 ; on the organisation 
and government of the villages, 37 
222-223, 224 ; on warfare, 173, 
226, 387 ; on succession to the 
kingshap, 189 ; character of the 
work, and period, 221-222 ; on 
caste, 222 ; on taxation, 223-224 ; 
on the privileges, duties, and limita- 
tions of the king, 224, 226 ; on the 
planning of the king's capital, 224- 

225 ; on the Council of State, 225 ; 
on the administration of justice, 

226 ; the ethics of, 226 ; on hunt- 
ing, 226 

Sulaiman, Khalif, 252 

Sulaiman, Mirza, 521 

SuUma Stiltana Begam : married to 
Bairam Khan, 453 

Sumantra, or Finance Minister, 36, 225 

Simierians, a Dravidian race, 5 

Sun window in early Indo-Aryan 
architecture, 115 

Sun-worship, 27, 136, 193 ; Akbar 
and sun-observances, 514 

Sundaramurti, Saiva revivalist, 245 

Sunga dynasty : founded by Pushya- 
mitra, 120 ; end of, 124 

Sunganda-virta-Chola, name given to 
one of the Chola kings, 234 

Sunna, body of Muhammadan cano- 
nical doctrine, 331, 517 

Sunni sect : favoured by Firuz Shah, 
317-318 ; the origin, the doctrine, 
and the following of, 331-334 ; the 
quarrels between Sunni and Shiah 
had little political influence, 388- 
389, 403-405; favoured by Babur, 
422 ; favoured by Sher Shah, 443 ; 
Akbar and, 474 ; their dissatisfac- 
tion with Akbar' s religious views, 
496 ; arouse Akbar' s contempt, 
517 ; mentioned, 389, 392, 393, 

394 
Supreme Soul, Vedic doctrme of, 134 
Sur, province, 440 
Siir, tribe of, 440, 446 
Surashtra, or Kathiawar, 164, 287, 

288. See Kathiawar 
Sur at, 481, 482 
Siirya, the Sun-god : the cult of, 121 ; 

patron deity of the Aryan warrior, 

182 ; the Ranas of Mewar claim 



to be descendants of, 182 ; Surya- 

worship merged into that of Vishnu, 

183 ; mentioned, 4, 7, 28, 41, 181 
Surya-putras , ' sons of Siirya,' 41, 121 
Surya-vamsa, the race of Surya, 41- 

42, 292, 306, 469 
Susa, 62, 65, 75, 112 
Susarman, King of Magadha, 124, 131 
Sutas — see Samanya 
Sutras, 198 

Siiyya, minister, 273, 274 
Svarasta, 191 w. See Panjab 
Swastika, the, as a symbol in Aryan 

art, 109 
Swat country : Akbar sends an 

expedition into, 521, 522 
Swayamvara, marriage ceremony, 

292 n. 
Sylhet, 410 

Tabriz, 375 

Tahirid dynasty, 280 

Tahmasp, Shah of Persia : Humayun 

a refugee at the court of, 436, 447 
Tai-Tsung, Chinese emperor, 248 
Taj Mahall, the, at Agra, 329, 406 
Takaroi, or Mughalmari, battle of, 

485 

Takkolam, 239, 240 

Taksha-sila, or Taxila : Alexander the 
Great in, 64 ; capital of the north- 
western province and reno^vned for 
its university, 90 ; a seat of Bud- 
dhist learning, 126 ; school of 
Hellenistic sculpture at, 135 ; the 
university capital of Mahayana 
Buddhism, 139, 141 ; famous for 
its school of medicine, 198, 256 ; 
tributary to Kashmir, 269 ; the 
university of, decayed, 408 ; men- 
tioned, 66, 103, 137, 143, 237 

Talikota, battle of, 401-402 

Talnir, fort, 357 

Tamerlane — see Timur 

Tamil race, 43 ; literature, the clas- 
sical age of, 237 

Tamlak, Fa-Hien at, 170 

Tana, 363 

Tandah, 485, 486 

Tang dynasty of China, 247 

Tanjore: the Saiva temple at, 240, 
243, 246, 329 ; mentioned, 127, 229, 
238, 239 

Tao-Ching, fellow-traveller of Fa- 
Hien, 169 

Tapas, or self-torture, 48-49 



INDEX 



Tapti, river, 355, 357 

Tardi Beg Khan, Governor of Delhi, 

451 

Tdnkh Yamini, cited, 286 n., 287 n. 

Tdnkh-i Alft, Akbar's, 514-515 

Tdnkh-i Ddudi, cited, 445 n. 

Tdnkh-i Firoz ShdM, cited, 301 nn., 
302 nn., 303 nn., 304 n., 305 nn., 
307 n., 313 n., 316 n., 319 nn., 
322 n. 

Tdnkh-i Sher ShdM, cited, 438 andn., 
439 MM., 440 nn., 441 M., 443 n. 

Tatar Khan, general : reproves Firuz 
Shah, 318-319 

Tatar Khan, rebel against Humayun, 
429 

Tattanur-Miivendavelana, envoy, 231 

Taxation : on fishermen, 75, 85 ; on 
land, 85, 234 ; on Uquor and gam- 
bling-houses, 85 ; the Code of 
Manu on, 161-162 ; Fa-Hien on, 
165 ; Hiuen-Tsang on, 194 ; the 
Sukrd-nitisdra on, 223 ; the vil- 
lage assemblies and, 228-229 ; 
tolls on merchandise, 234 ; in 
Rajputana, 262 ; abuse of, under 
the Muhammadan Sultans, 298 ; 
the Sultan ' Ala-ud-din' s oppressive 
taxation, 302, 304-305 ; Firuz 
Shah and the poll-tax, 317, 322 ; 
alleviated under Firuz Shah, 319 ; 
Sher Shah's method of revenue- 
collection, 439-440, 487 ; relieved 
by Akbar, 465, 487, 526 ; Akbar's 
early reforms in the revenue admin- 
istration, 479, 515 ; Todar Mall's 
reforms, 486-490, 515 

Taxila — see Taksha-sila 

Telingana, 307, 339, 359, 363, 387. 
See Telugu country 

Telugu country, 239, 339, 361. See 
Telingana 

Temple : the traditional plan of the 
Hindu, 1 1 6-1 17 ; temple architec- 
ture of the Gupta era, 178-183 ; 
temple architecture of Northern 
and Southern India, 216-217 ; the 
village assemblies concerned with 
the administration of temples, 229- 
230 ; the temples of the Saiva 
revival, 216-217, 218-219, 238- 
239, 242-244 ; the fundamental 
idea of Indo-Aryan temple-plan- 
ning best preserved in the temples 
of Southern India, 243 ; the temple 
the college, Parliament-house, and 



citadel-fortress of the Indo-Aryan 
community, 244 ; Jain temple 
architecture. 245 ; the Muslim 
mosque borrowed features from 
the Indian temple 254 ; the great 
era of temple-building, 259, 264- 
265 ; temples put to practical uses, 
265 ; sculptured ornamentation 
abandoned by the Hindu crafts- 
men, 342 ; destroyed temples re- 
built as mosques, 343 ; Hindu 
temples converted into mosques, 517 

Terai, the Nepal, 49 

Thaneshar (Sthanesvara) : rise of, 
188 ; plundered by Mahmiid of 
Ghazni, 285 ; Prithivi-raja de- 
feated at, 293 ; mentioned, 191, 
290, 291 

Three Aspects of the One Eternal : 
represented by Brahma, Vishnu, 
and Siva, 31, 109 ; represented by 
Buddha, Sangha, and Dharma, 
109, 136-137 ; the basis of the 
Brahmanical concept, 1 09-1 10 ; 
the philosophical and the religious 
theories of, 136 ; represented sym- 
bolically in the sculpture of Fle- 
phanta, 185 ; one of the funda- 
mental ideas of Indian theism, 185 ; 
the worship of, atHarsha's festival, 
205 

Three Jewels, the, 137 

Tibet : Muhammad ibn Bakhtiyar 
attempted the conquest of, 299 ; 
mentioned, 249 

Timiir : his fictitious pedigree, 368, 
377 ; invades India, 368-377 ; 
captures and sacks Delhi, 374-375 ; 
and the genesis of the ' Mogul 
style,' 376 ; death, 377, 379 ; 
mentioned, 236, 323, 344, 347, 
381, 420, 423, 428, 504 

Timur Shin Khan, Mogul leader, 311 

Tirhut, 310 

Tirthankaras, legendary sages, 58 

Tiruvalluvar, Tamil poet, 237 

Tiruvannamalai, temple of, 239 n. 

Tishyarakshita, wife of Asoka, 103 

Tissa, King of Ceylon: converted to 
Buddhism, 96 

Tod, J. : his Annals of Rajast'han 
cited, 38 n., 261, 262 nn., 263 
and n., 292 n. 

Todar Mall, Raja : his revenue 
reforms, 479, 486-489, 515 ; made 
Vakil, 479, 490 ; made Vaztr, 489 ; 

579 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



helps in Akbar's conquest of 
Bengal, 484-486, 491 ; heads a 
new expedition to Bengal, 489 ; 
in a campaign against the Afghans, 
524 ; death, 525 ; mentioned, 534 

Tolls : under Chandragupta's govern- 
ment, 85 ; in the Chola kingdom, 
234; relieved by Akbar, 515. 
See Taxation 

Tols, Sanskrit schools: the barriers 
against admittance to, broken 
down, 338 ; the work in, continued 
through the Muhammadan period, 
408 ; higher education given in, 
409 

Toramana, Hun chieftain, 175 

Toran, or gateway of the stiapa : 
symbohsm of, 113 ; origin of, 180 

Towers of Victory [Jaya stamhha) : 
at Chitor, 295 and n., 344 

Towns : growth of, from the villages, 
38 ; the planning of Pataliputra, 
75-77 ; Sukracharya on the plan- 
ning of the king's capital, 224-225 ; 
the planning of Ahmadabad, 341 ; 
Vijayanagar, 402-403 

Traffic, regulation of, in ancient 
India, 72, 74 

Transmigration : Manu on, 163 ; 
Akbar's faith in, 500 

Tree, the, as a symbol in Indian art, 
109 

Tri-ratna, the Buddhist Trinity, 137 

Trichinopoly, 239 7^, 

Trimiirti, or Three Aspects, 205 ; the 
sculpture of, at Elephanta, 184, 
329. See Three Aspects 

Trinity — see Three Aspects 

Trinity of Matter, 136 

Trinity of Spirit, 136 

Tripura, demon, 246 

Tughlak dynasty, 309-323, 367-379 

Tughlak Shah, Sultan of Delhi, 309- 
310, 315-316 

Tughlakabad, 309, 313 

Tulamba, 371, 372 

Tungabhadra, river, 241, 386 

Tunjina, King of Kashmir, 274 

Tiiran, 517, 521 

Turima, regent of Vijayanagar, 389, 

392-393. 395 

Turkistan, 287 

Turks : tribes of, invade India, 125, 
138 ; Ivalitaditya of Kashmir and, 
271; Turkishdynastyof Delhi, 294- 
323, 367-379 ; employed in Hindu 

580 



army of Kanauj, 292 ; the Turki 
Sultans and Indo-Aryan cultiure, 
294-296 ; their quaUty as rulers, 
297-298 ; Turks from Europe help 
Gujerat against the Portuguese, 
346 ; added nothing to the culture 
of Asia, 376 ; the Turkish dynasty 
of Bijapur, 385-406 ; intellectual 
development in the race probably 
the result of fusion with Iranian 
and Indo-Aryan stock, 420 ; men- 
tioned, 175, 257 

Tusita, heavenly sphere, 193 

Tiiyul lands, 506 

Udai Singh, Ranaof Mewar, 463, 467, 
469, 490 

Ujjain : a centre of Aryan cultiire, 
renowned for its university and 
astronomical schools, 90, 164, 198, 
263, 264, 347 ; became the Gupta 
capital, 164 ; the ancient name for 
Malwa, 263 ; captured by Altamsh, 
299 ; mentioned, 349. See also 
Malwa 

'Ulama, Islamic priests, 371, 375, 380, 
443. 471. 496 

Uma — see Parvati 

Umbrella : part of Indian royal 
paraphernalia, 106, no; a sytn- 
bolic element in the stiipa, no 

United Provinces — see Agra and 
Oudh 

Unity of the Godhead, the doctrine 
of, 209 

Universal Self, the Vedas on the 
worship of, 117 

Universal Soul, the Vedic theory of, 
50, 55 

Universities : origin of, 38 ; the 
work of the Indian universities 
continued through the Muham- 
madan period, 408 

Upagupta, Buddhist monk : con- 
verted Asoka to Buddhism, 91 ; 
accompanied Asoka on pilgrimage, 

97 

Upanishads : contain the root-ideas 
of Indo-Aryan religion, 31 ; men- 
tioned, 27, 28, 34, 41, 55, 58, 117, 
132, 135, 164, 183, 214, 219 

Ur, city, 129 

Urchah, 533 

Urdu dialect, 489 

Uriya countr}', 239 

Ushas, the Dawn Maiden, 106, 114 



INDEX 



Utch, fortress, 370 

Utpala, uncle of Brihaspati of Kash- 
mir, 273 

Uttaramailtir, village, 233, 238 

Uttarameru - Catur - Vedimangalani, 
village union, 230 

Uzbeks, Turki tribe, 383, 464, 465- 
466, 521 

Vaisa.1,1, General Assembly of the 

Sangha at, 53 
Vaishnava sect : one of the two great 
groups of modern Hinduism, 29, 
42, 112 ; a Kshatriya cult, 31, 113 ; 
the lines of cleavage between the 
Saiva school and, evidenced by the 
stiipa and the sikhara, 113 ; Vaish- 
nava revival of the Gupta era, 178, 
183, 325 ; the sikhara a Vaishnava 
symbol, 180 ; the origin of the 
Vaishnava theory of bhakti, 183 ; 
Mahay ana Buddhism a phase of 
the Vaishnava movement, 184 ; 
Hiuen-Tsang on customs of Vaish- 
nava ascetics, 195 ; had its root 
in the beginnings of Aryan religion, 
213 ; origin and development of 
the school, 214 ; absorbed Maha- 
yana Buddhism in the North, 220 ; 
Ramanuj a' s Vaishnava propaganda 
in the South, 325-326 ; Vaishnavism 
always an exotic in the South, 326 ; 
Chaitany a' s Vaishnava revival, 338, 
410-419 : the Vaishnava doctrine 
of kingship, 512 

Vaisyas : the Indo-Aryan mercantile 
class, 16 ; status and duties of, 20, 
21-22 ; penalty upon, for theft, 
21 ; probably traded with the 
South at an early date, 43 ; work 
of Vaisya craftsmen, 107 ; Manu 
on marriage of, 159 ; Manu on the 
taxation of, 162 ; a Vaisya became 
a Kshatriya when made king, 191 ; 
the Sukrd-niiisdra on, 222 ; had 
a reputation for honesty and truth- 
fulness, 361, 362 ; gained control 
of India's political relations with 
Burope, 365-366 

Vakil, or Prime Minister, 461, 479, 
490 

Vakkula, the Buddha's disciple, 97 

Valabhi, 187 

Vamanapatha, village street, 244 

Vanga — see Bengal 

Varuna, Vedic deity, 4, 7, 28, 192 



Vasishka, Kushan emperor, 144 

Vasishtha, rishi, 221 

Vasubandhu, Buddhist teacher, 172, 

174 

Vasudeva, Kushan emperor, 144 

Vasudeva, King of Magadha, 124 

Vasumitra, grandson of Pushj^amitra, 
121 

Vasurata, Brahman, 174 

Vatsaraja, Giirjara king, 266, 267 

Vazir, or Finance Minister, 473, 489 

Vedanta, 280, 326, 329 

Vedas : on the whole, Aryan in 
origin, 5 ; contain the root-ideas 
of Aryan religion, 31, 216 ; the 
attitude of the Brahman and 
Kshatriya philosophical schools to, 
40 ; the Brahmanical view of the 
effect of Buddhism upon Vedic 
revelation, 45 ; the Buddha's pro- 
paganda not really in conflict 
with the fundamental principles 
of Vedic religion, 54 ; the divine 
authority of, denied by Mahavira, 
58 ; on the worsliip of gods, 117 ; 
Brahmanism makes a new inter- 
pretation of, 122-123 ; the teach- 
ing of, brought to the South, 127 ; 
Buddhism and the religion of the 
Vedas, 148 ; mentioned, 4, 26, 36, 
118, 185, 244 

Vedic deities, 4, 7, 28-31, 182 ; 
sacrifice, 47-49, 120-121, 204 

Vegetarianism : Asoka's rules helped 
to promote, 100 

Venkatadri, brother of Ramraj of 
Vijayanagar, 403 

Videha, Aryan kingdom, 37, 59 

Vihara, name of Magadha, loi. See 
Magadha 

Vijayalaya, Chola king, 238 

Vijayanagar. I. The state: struggle 
with Bijapur, 385-403. 527. 528 ; 
mentioned, 339. II. The city : 
sack of, 402-403 ; the ' Blephant 
Stables ' at, 406 

Vijayanagar dynasty, 385 

Vijayeshvara, Saiva temple at, 268 

Vikrama era, 144 

Vikramaditya I = Chandragupta II, 
158, 164, 408. See Chandragupta II 

Vikramaditya II, Chaluky an emperor, 
218, 242 

Vikramaditya, King of Sravasti, 194 

Vikramaditya : Hemu assumes the 
title, 451 

581 



ARYAN RULE IN INDIA 



Villages : village system of Aryans and 
non-Aryans, lo et seq., 22-29, 182 ; 
Vedic religion the moving spirit 
in the organisation of the Aryan 
village community, 31 ; the village 
the political unit of the state, 38 ; 
growth of the town from the village, 
38 ; the administration of the Bud- 
dhist Church framed on the political 
institutions of the Aryan village 
community, 52 ; the Buddha's 
metaphors taken from the life of 
the Aryan village community, 53 ; 
the traditional rights of the village 
communities not destroyed under 
the Mauryan Bmpire, 69 ; classifi- 
cation of villages by Kautiliya- 
artha-Sastra, and rules for their 
government, 70-71 ; the village 
in religious symbolism, 109-110 ; 
travellers' rest-houses in the village, 
130 ; the doctrine of the One in 
Many evidenced in the planning 
of the village, 135-136 ; Manu on 
the grouping of villages for ad- 
ministrative purposes, 162 ; Indian 
political freedom built on the basis 
of the village republics, 215 ; the 
organisation of village life un- 
affected by wars and dynastic 
changes, 220-221 ; the Sukrd-niti- 
sdra on the organisation and 
government of the villages, 222- 
223 ; the village assemblies of the 
South, 227-235 ; Indian temples 
planned on the model of the village, 
244 ; the village system the founda- 
tion of the body politic in the 
Rajput states, 261-262 ; position 
of the village communities under 
the Muhammadan Sultans, 298 ; 
the village system and spiritual life 
unaffected by the impact of Islam, 
407-409 ; village schools, 409 ; 
position of the village communities 
in Akbar's time, 525 

Vindya Pitaka, mles of discipline for 
the Buddhist Sangha, 54, 57, loi ; 
Fa-Hien's journey to India in 
search of, 165, 168 

Vindhya Mountains : the southern 
boundary of Aryavarta, 34 ; men- 
tioned, 42, 127, 139, 152, 188, 189, 
190, 241, 300 

Virupaksha temple, at Pattadakal, 
218, 242 

582 



Vishnu, the Preserver : conceptions 
and attributes of, 28 ; patron deity 
of the Kshatriyas, 28, 180 ; a name 
representing all the symbols asso- 
ciated with life in Indo-Arj'an 
religion, 31 ; as a philosophical 
concept, 31 ; the popular concep- 
tion of, 32 ; Krishna and Rama 
incarnations of, 42, 185 ; the 
Buddha regarded as an avatar of, 
55, 184 ; Vishnu pillars, 105-106, 
173, 180, 502 ; the blue lotus 
associated with, 106, 113, 180, 184 ; 
site of the temple of, in the Aryan 
village, 109, 132, 180 ; in the Three 
Aspects of Brahmanism, 109, 136, 
185, 205 ; Motmt Mem his abode, 
7, III, 112 ; every Indo- Aryan king 
regarded as Vishnu's vicegerent on 
earth, 145 ; represented in the stele 
of Naram Sin, 113, 181 ; a cosmic 
principle recognised by all schools 
of Indian philosophy, 145 ; revival 
of Brahmanism in the form of 
the Vishnu cult, 156 ; the Guptas 
devoted adherents of the cult of, 
172 ; the flowering tree a symbol 
of, 182 ; the king's or chieftain's 
fort a symbol of, 182 ; Siirya- 
worship merged into that of ^'^ishnu, 
183 ; symbolism and metaphysics 
of the cult of, 183 ; LakshmT the 
bride of, 184 ; raised the earth 
from the water, 273 ; the sikhara 
a symbol of, 326 ; Satya-Narayana 
a Bengali synonym for, 338 ; Chai- 
tanj^a regarded as an incarnation 
of, 417-418 ; mentioned, 7, 29, 
144, 178, 213, 347 

Vishnu-Narayana : conceived as the 
cosmic Slumber, 27, 28 ; the 
Buddha worshipped as, 109 ; as 
Eternity, the stupa a symbol of, 
III ; Krishna connected with, 
415 «.; mentioned, 114, 132, 
192 

Vishnu-Siirya : took the place of 
Indra, 27 ; patron deity of the 
Kshatriyas, 41 ; patron deity of 
Aryan royalty, 112 ; connected 
with early sun - worship, 193 ; 
Krishna connected with, 415 n. 

Vishvakarma, the Divine Architect, 

185 
Vishvakarma Chaitya House, EUora, 
185-186 



INDEX 



Vishvambara, name of Chaitanya, 

410-41 1. See Chaitanya 
Vishvarupa, brother of Chaitanya, 

410-41 I 
Vitasta, river, 271, 273-274 

Wawd, Khalif, 250, 252, 257 

' Wanderers,' fraternity of mendi- 
cant sophists, 50 

Wang-hiuen-tse, Chinese envoy, 249- 
250 

Warangal, 307 

Warfare : the Sukrd-nitisdra on, 173, 
226 

Water-supply, regulation of, in 
ancient India, 73. See Irrigation 

Watters, T., cited, 194 nn., 195 nn., 
196 nn., 197 nn., 198 n., 201 n., 
212 n. 

Wencheng, Princess, 249 

' Wheel of the Law, the,' prayer- 
wheel, 117 

Wheeler, J. Talboys, cited, 333, 
403 n. 

Women : Manu on, 163 ; served on 
the committees of the village as- 
semblies, 231-232 ; Indian women 
prized in the Muslim slave-markets, 
308 

Wood : used in early building con- 
struction, and acquired a sacra- 
mental meaning, 11 5-1 16 

Yama, Ivord of Death : the western 
gate in the Aryan village dedicated 
to, 27 ; a gate in Pataliputra dedi- 
cated to, 77 ; the stiipa a symbol 

of, III 

Varkand, 139 

^ashaskara, King of Kashmir, 275 
^asodharman, Raja of Central India, 
175. 187 



Yasovarman, Raja of Kanauj, 264, 
271 

Yavanas, or Greeks, 121, 130, 188, 
236, 292 

Yoga, the doctrine of : the Buddha 
studied, 49 ; description of, 134 ; 
incorporated in the Mahayanist 
system, 138, 192 ; Hiuen-Tsang's 
visit to India undertaken princi- 
pally to obtain knowledge of, 192 ; 
Akbar instructed in, 500 

Yoga-sdstra, 200, 201 

Yoga-sutras, 122 

Yogi's Seat, the, at Fatehpur, 473 

Yudhisthira, one of the Pandavas, 40 

Yudhisthira I of Kashmir, 269-270 

Yueh-chi — see Kushans 

Yule, Sir Henry, cited, 359 n., 360, 
361 nn., 362 nn., 363 and nn., 
365 nn. 

Yusuf 'Adil Shah, Sultan of Bijapur, 
385. 389-390 

Yusuf Ali, Mr, cited, 494 n. 

Yusuf Turk, foster-father of Ismail 
'Adil Shah I of Bijapiir, 390-392 

Yiisufzais, Afghan tribe : Akbar 
sends expeditions against, 521-524 

Yuva-rdja, or Crown Prince, 87, 152, 
189 

Zain Khan, one of Akbar' s generals, 

522-523 
Zaman-i-Shaibani, Khan, 459-460, 

464, 465-466, 484 
Zamani, Mariam — see Mariam 
Zamorin of Calicut, 344, 345 
Zarmaros, Indian who immolated 
himself before the Emperor Augus- 
tus, 140 
Zein-ud-din, Shaikh, 357-358 
Zoroaster, orZarathushtra, 61-62, 143 
Zoroastrianism, 280 







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